


delete

by naboojakku



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Tragedy, Anxiety, Ben is 35, Bittersweet Ending, COMPLETE!, Childhood Trauma, Choking, Depression, F/M, Flashbacks, Heavy Angst, Hospitalization, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Introspection, Intrusive Thoughts, Isolation, Mental Health Issues, No Fluff, No Smut, Older Man/Younger Woman, POV Rey (Star Wars), POV Third Person, Pain, Past Abuse, Recovery, References to Depression, Rey Needs A Hug (Star Wars), Sad, Sad with bittersweet ending, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Soft Ben Solo, Suicidal Ideation, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Violent Thoughts, age gap, archive warning is for self-violence, brief mention of pregnancy, but really just a mention of choking, engaged reylo, im not in the medical field DONT YELL AT ME, no good feels, rey is 20
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:42:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27666281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naboojakku/pseuds/naboojakku
Summary: On a Thursday afternoon, in the middle of her two o’clock math class, Rey makes the decision.The rest is easy.**MAJOR TRIGGER WARNINGS**
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 100
Kudos: 154





	1. ache

**Author's Note:**

> **TRIGGER WARNING NOTICE:**
> 
> **This fic will have potentially triggering content in the form of self-harm, depression, suicidal tendencies/ideations/stream of consciousness. Please do not read if any of this material may be triggering for you. Your mental health and overall mental stability is more important.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **this is really fucking sad sorry**

On a Thursday afternoon, in the middle of her two o’clock math class, she makes the decision.

One moment it’s pure chaos in her head. Her temples throb like the pain is physical, and her hands shake as she's accosted by horrifying thought after horrifying thought. But then, like a secret switch has been flipped, the noise quiets to little more than a murmur. Tension releases in her shoulders, and the world around her solidifies. 

She nods. That’s it, then. That’s it. 

Rain drops from the leaden sky in sheets, so thick that most drivers coasting through the campus pull to the side of the road to wait it out. The deluge isn’t sudden—it’s been forecasted for weeks now. November isn’t normally considered the rainy season, but mother nature seems to have her own ideas for what’s appropriate and what’s not in terms of seasonal weather patterns. 

Or maybe mother nature just doesn’t give a shit. 

Professor Calrissian approaches her desk with a small smile. “Miss Niima. May I see you at the end of class?”

She startles out of her daydreams and nods quickly, fixing her eyes on his gray tie. He’s always dressed so spotlessly, and she doesn’t understand why. It’s not as if there’s anyone to impress. The class is filled with freshman and juniors who think Champion hoodies and Adidas track pants are the height of what she likes to call faux fashion. (It’s supposed to look effortless but usually misses the mark.). This is most students’ last class of the week, and once the professor dismisses them at three-thirty sharp, the frat parties and co-ed sleepovers begin.

Not that Rey has any experience with that sort of thing. 

She wonders, and not for the first time, what it’s like to have a genuine sleepover. Like, with friends and stuff. Based on some of the horror stories she’s heard over the years, it’s possible she hasn’t missed out on very much. Pranks and fights and uncomfortable sleeping arrangements. Still. The possibilities plague her for the rest of class—it must be nice to get along with people, to have inside jokes and ongoing conversations and shared hobbies—and before she knows it, students are leaving. 

These days, she blinks and time is missing. Minutes, hours. Soon it might be days. 

When the last gaggle of students filters from the classroom, Rey rises sluggishly from her seat in the back and makes her way to Professor Calrissian’s desk. His thick-framed glasses are perched on the edge of his nose, and his eyes are cast downward as he jots notes in red ink. But he must sense her approach because he lifts his head as she comes to a stop a polite distance away.

“Must be the weather,” he says in response to her sudden yawn, and Rey looks down to hide her blush. _Or lack of sleep,_ she thinks. “Thanks for agreeing to see me.”

“Of course.” She chews on her bottom lip, tearing strips of skin until she tastes blood. Her voice is distant, like she’s speaking inside an echo chamber. “Is everything okay?”

He nods pensively. “I’ve noticed you’re missing some assignments. Nothing major, but enough to concern me.” 

Rey swallows and stares at the floor. Doesn’t matter. Why can’t he see that it doesn’t matter? She feels like her decision should be splashed across her face in the same red ink he's using to mark papers. 

“You’re a wonderful student, Rey,” Professor Calrissian continues. “Never late, always acing the exams… Although, I _would_ like to hear from you more often.” He winks to soften the blow.

She nods mechanically, still tracing the cracked linoleum with her eyes. Maybe, if she pulls another all-nighter, she could— 

Oh. It hits her again. (These days her memory trips over itself trying to remember something as simple as how to shift from park to drive.) In a few short days, none of this will matter. Exams, assignments, whatever. Hell, by class next week… 

The block in her throat dissipates at the reminder, and she raises her eyes to a spot on his chin. _Just get through this, Rey._ This moment, and the next, and the next. Until there are none left. 

He’s still talking, but her mind is elsewhere. She’s thinking about what needs to be done. One thing she can’t stand is loose ends. Her skin is ice cold. 

“...Take your time,” Professor Calrissian’s saying, smiling benignly. “As long as you hand the assignments in before the end of the semester, you’ll be guaranteed an A.”

They wrap up their conversation, Rey’s mouth moving independently of her mind, and soon she’s in the deserted hallway of the English building. All the students have already left for their dorms and wherever else teens go to hang out when the sun sets at four o’clock.

She steps outside and hunches her shoulders against the bracing wind. Even in her chunky, threadbare sweater and cable-knit leggings—baggy and uncomfortable now—she’s instantly shivering. Her mittens and scarves are at home—they needed to be washed after she spilled half a cup of steaming hot coffee on the overburdened coat rack last week. 

That had been a bad day. 

Actually, they’re all bad days, but that one had been particularly brutal. 

She shuffles across the parking lot and dumps her books in the back seat of her old Civic. Her pink pencil case slides free of the mess and lands face-down on the asphalt. 

Great. 

For a moment, Rey stares. In her mind, she imagines bending down, grasping the case around the middle, picking it up, and tossing it in with the rest of her stuff. She imagines it so very clearly that it’s almost like she’s already done it. 

But thinking, imagining, _pretending_ is one thing. The actual act itself seems fucking exhausting. 

In the end, she closes the car door, sits down in the driver’s seat, and switches on the ignition. 

She ignores the sight of the pencil case lying pathetically in the middle of the empty parking lot until she turns a corner. _Doesn’t matter,_ she tells herself, hands tight on the wheel. Her favorite pen is in that case. And a whole set of plant-themed erasers. Pastel highlighters. Blank post-it notes. 

_Doesn’t matter._

⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️

When Ben comes home from work, she straightens on the sofa and paints on a smile. She visualizes the subtle reds and pinks that make up a person’s mouth, and she twists her features into something convincing. Something nice and open. Something happy.

He calls out as soon as he crosses the threshold. Keys clatter on the counter. Jacket swishes on the back of a kitchen chair. The heavy clap of shoes on tile. She knows his routine by now. First, he’ll rid himself of unnecessary belongings—messenger bag, tie, laptop case, wallet. Next, he’ll run his hands through his hair and stretch his muscles, hands straining towards the ceiling.

A forty-five minute commute in the pouring rain is no joke. Ever since his father died in a car accident fifteen years ago, Ben’s been adamant about car safety. That might explain why he never goes so much as a mile over the speed limit. 

And then he’ll come for her.

“Hey, baby.” A smile washes across his face like sunshine through clouds. Rey’s heart sloshes in her chest as he sits beside her on the sofa and folds her into his arms. She curls into his side, breathing in the faint coffee smell of his shirt. “I missed you.”

He always says that.

“I missed you too,” she whispers, and the ache is there. The ache is always there, but worse in these quiet moments. She doesn’t know why. “Did you have a good day at work?”

He nods and lays his cheek on top of her head. “Very busy. Hux made some last minute adjustments to a new program we’re working on and conveniently “forgot” to tell me.” He chuckles, the vibration a comforting rumble. “Not especially subtle, in terms of sabotage.”

“He’s losing his edge.” 

Ben sighs. “I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt this time. He insists it was an accident.”

He always says that, too.

Rey splays a hand across his stomach and presses down lightly. _Warm,_ she thinks. _Firm. Strong._

“How was class?”

Her tone is light, carefree. “Fun. We’re reading poetry this week. Some of the greats.” 

“Oh yeah?” He covers her hand with his own, and the heat is a welcome reprieve from the cold that’s settled in her bones like a slow rot. She closes her eyes. “Like who?”

“Nobody you’d recognize.” But he won’t give up, so she lists a few names. “Hughes. Woodsworth. Angelou.” She pauses. “Dickinson.”

“Mm.” He brings her hand to his mouth and lightly kisses the center of her palm. Normally, a frisson of heat would ripple down her spine in response, and she might snuggle closer and kiss him back, but today she simply accepts it. She simply sits. 

_You know,_ her mind whispers disapprovingly. _You know better than to give in._

And she does. She does know.

After months of uncertainty, she's made the decision. Once you settle on something like that, there’s no going back. 

Some decisions are permanent.

⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️

Later that night, as Ben’s in the shower, she sits cross-legged on the floor of their bedroom and sets her nightstand drawer beside her on the carpet.

No loose ends. 

She picks up a small notebook first. It’s filled with food doodles, random squiggly lines that mean she was likely on the telephone, and appointment reminders. She hesitates before setting it directly in front of her—a "maybe" pile. Maybe Ben needs it for something. To take notes. He might like to have some scrap paper available in his office. 

A tube of vanilla frosting chapstick. Rey sniffs the end and wrinkles her nose. Too sweet, and probably years old. She drops it to her left. 

Trash pile. 

Buttons from a book fair in Chicago. Left.

A collection of clean napkins. Left.

A candle with perhaps half an inch of wax left at the bottom. She brings it to her nose. Strawberry Cinnamon. Weird combination. Left.

Tweezers. She raises an eyebrow. Ben was looking for these several weeks ago. Definitely the right.

Keep pile. 

Stapler. Right.

Charging cord. Right.

A pair of pink hair bands. Left.

After a while, Rey sets a rhythm. The sorting is relatively mindless, and she doesn’t hear the shower cut off, doesn’t notice the bathroom door opening until Ben’s hovering over her, running a towel through his hair. 

“Do my own eyes deceive me?” She blinks, swaying a little, and he laughs, flashing white teeth. “You’ve been meaning to clean this thing out for months.”

Rey shrugs and sets aside a small box of paper clips. (Right.) “Just figured it was time.”

But her stomach does a slow roll, and she struggles to maintain a placid expression. Everything’s fine. This is normal. She’s just cleaning. No harm in that.

“At eleven-fifteen at night?” Ben drops the towel in their clothes hamper and extends his hands. “Time for bed.”

But she shakes her head and says, “Let me finish this first. Ten minutes.” 

He plants his hands on his hips. “Rey. Don’t make me.”

“I’m not making you do anything.” 

And maybe her voice is flatter than normal, or there’s something in the way she says it, because Ben drops all pretense. He doesn’t argue. Instead, he steps carefully around the neat piles and scoops her into his arms as if she weighs no more than a teddy bear. 

“ _Ben_ ,” she complains, but he nuzzles her neck and sets her gently down on the bed. He tucks her in, covers pulled to her shoulders so she's swaddled. Once he flicks off the light, he settles in next to her. 

“I wasn’t finished,” she complains. The contents of the drawer swirl in her mind. They need to be organized. 

He trails soft kisses along her jaw. “You look tired.”

Her heart misses a beat. He’s noticed? She takes a page from Professor Calrissian’s book. “Must be the weather.”

“Don’t push yourself too hard,” he murmurs, voice low. “It worries me.”

“I’m fine,” she insists, and then, like a mocking echo, _I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine._ The reassurance is automatic. 

He smooths his hands over her hips and draws her into his side. “Rey.”

“Yeah?” She settles her head on his shoulder and stares blindly through the dark. The wind whistles outside. 

He doesn’t answer for several minutes, and she assumes he’s drifted off to sleep. But finally he shifts and breathes into her hair, his voice thick with exhaustion. “I love you.”

And tears sting her eyes. “I love you too. Go to sleep.”

The pain only hits her when his breathing evens out and the arm around her waist slackens. The pain, like an anvil to the chest, breaking bones and crushing lungs. The pain, like a fucking freight train carrying steel beams, unleashing them one by one so they pin her to the bottom of a very dark, very deep well. 

The pain, like something unspeakable made real. Imagine the very worst thing that has ever happened to you. Hold on to it. Then imagine the worst thing you’ve ever seen happen to someone else. Combine the two, and multiply that pain by ten, by a hundred, by a number so large the mind is incapable of quantifying it.

Only then will you have the barest understanding of what it’s like in her head, in her heart.

She squeezes her eyes shut, resisting the pull of the dark. But as always, it’s a losing battle. In no time she’s swamped by it, and by the pain, and by an ache so deep it’s obviously long been a part of her. Since birth, perhaps. Since she was nothing more than a twinkle in her mother’s eye.

And then it starts. 

_Your own parents gave you up because they didn’t want you._

True. 

_No friends, no loved ones, no family. What do you have, Rey?_

Ben, but he is only one person. 

_You’re an idiot. Can’t write even one simple line of poetry. Even an illiterate child could string together a fucking sentence. Your papers suck. Your analyses suck. You shouldn't even be in school._

Again, true. 

_Ben could do so much better. You’re weighing him down. You’re a collar around his neck. He needs someone who can cook for themselves and clean up their messes and shower more than once a week._

Yes, yes, yes. 

_You don’t deserve love. You don’t deserve to be safe or happy. Let's be real, Rey. You don’t deserve anything._

She chokes on the lump that’s formed in her throat and rolls over on the mattress. Her hand scrabbles weakly for the bedside drawer before she remembers it’s still on the carpet. Her legs are rubber, and so she falls out of bed, hitting the floor with a muffled exclamation. Her fingers touch the ibuprofen, the Vicks Vapo-Rub, the bag of cough drops, and they bypass the full bottle of Oxycontin from Ben’s wisdom tooth surgery last spring. 

Rey finally finds the bottle of sleeping pills and swallows two, the recommended daily dose, before quickly adding two more. She breathes a sigh of relief. That should do it. They’re fast-acting. 

She stumbles back into bed, drawing the covers up to her shoulders, and waits for the chemicals to kick in. Any minute now. Any second. 

Please.

Through the dark, she can just make out Ben’s face: pale, and long, and hard-edged, with a straight nose, wide lips, thick brows. He’s turned toward her, and even though it hurts, even though it feels like her heart is being ripped from her chest, she doesn’t hold his hand, doesn’t cuddle close, doesn’t kiss him goodnight.

Because the meds haven't kicked in yet, the dark is still steadily devouring, the voice is still going, and the voice is never wrong. 

_You’re a burden to him, Rey. He will be much better off without you._

And it’s true. 

This voice that whispers to her in the dead of night is her own, and she may lie to everyone else, but she never lies to herself. 

A burden. An inconvenience. She’s always been one or the other. Sometimes both. 

But not for much longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **so uhh this fic isn't written or edited well, and it's not meant to be handled sensitively or delicately. pls keep that in mind.**


	2. burden

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **owie**

In the morning, Rey rises promptly at four-forty-five. This gives her over an hour to finish organizing her drawer and tie up some other loose ends. Besides, her brain has been going all night. Sleep is useless to her now. 

Ben moans when she leaves the bed, but she freezes in place and holds her breath until he settles back to sleep. She ignores the hand that strays across the sheets, searching for her. His face is less tense in repose, and if he wakes now, it’ll fill with stress and worry again. That’s the very last thing she wants for him. He deserves to rest.

In the bathroom, she steps on the digital scale and is unsurprised to see she’s dropped another five pounds in the last week. That’s almost twenty overall in the past…

Rey frowns. She can’t remember, exactly. The last month? The last six weeks? All the days blur together now. Besides, she hasn’t had much of an appetite. Food all tastes like gray mush. Once, she might’ve made an appointment with a primary care physician to try and figure out a way to gain some weight. Maybe schedule some tests to determine why she’s no longer hungry. The lack of appetite might explain why she’s so fucking cold all the time too. 

But she’s not worried about it anymore. 

Dressed in another gigantic hoodie and extra small leggings that are still, somehow, a little too loose—and when did _that_ happen?—Rey breathes in the steam rising from her hot mug of tea. Green because it’s supposedly healthy. Not that it really matters, in the grand scheme of things. But it’s nice to pretend that things will get better. A silly little game of make-believe she plays sometimes when she doesn’t want to think about real life. 

The kitchen is freezing. The linoleum tiles burn with cold through the thin cotton of her socks. Ben loathes the cold, and so the thermostat is usually set pretty high during the winter months, but she's still cold and shaking. She shuffles into the living room and stares out of the front window. 

“Rey?”

⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️

Ten Months Ago

“ _No_ ,” she insisted, waving her arms nervously. His tone was faintly cajoling, but she wasn't going to fall victim to his sweet-talking. “Seriously, I’m fine right where I am.”

Ben glided to a smooth stop in the rink, his skates slicing through a thin crust of frost. He was breathing heavily, cheeks flushed a healthy red, a lopsided grin on his face. Decked out in heavy winter gear—a black sweater, gray sherpa vest, and slick-looking black coat, paired with a wool scarf and fingerless gloves—Ben was only a fur hat away from total insulation. He was a baby when it came to the cold and never left the house unprepared.

“Last chance.” Ben waggled his eyebrows and gestured behind him at the rink. There really wasn't all that much to see aside from one or two small families, several teenagers making lovesick eyes at one another (who no doubt were skipping school), and one group of giggling kids skating in clumsy circles around the arena. 

She wrinkled her nose and quickly shook her head. “I’m fine on the sidelines. Go skate.”

Ben’s lower lip pushed forward in a small pout, and she held in a laugh. He was very persuasive, but she was equally as stubborn. She would rather lay facedown on the dirty carpet for the next hour than step foot on the ice. There were many skills she did not possess, and skating was one of them. 

Leaning over the waist-high wooden barrier, Ben tugged on her scarf to bring her closer. She stuck out her tongue but obeyed. His kiss was rougher than she'd expected, hard and possessive and strangely desperate, like he couldn't get enough. 

“I’ll miss you,” he said gruffly, nudging her temple, his lips skimming along her hair. 

“Ben.” She smiled and lightly tapped his cheek. “I’ll be right here. You can literally see me from every angle.”

He grumbled unhappily under his breath but released his hold, gliding backward across the ice, eyes on her. She felt a sudden pang of concern—what if he tripped or crashed into someone?—but as he expertly navigated his way across the rink to rejoin the group, reluctantly turning his back on her, she let out a breath, and her shoulders relaxed. Of course nothing would happen to him. Ben was confident in all things; he knew what he was doing. 

At least one of them did. 

Sighing, Rey moved away from the ice and sat down on the lowest riser of the building's stadium seating. The skating rink wasn’t all that busy—it was a weekday, so kids were still in school and professionals were still at work. Well, supposedly. There were a handful of couples twirling around, hands locked tightly together, faces flushed and smiling. It was a Friday in early December, so she couldn't blame them for skipping out on certain priorities. 

_The best time of the year._

She had never learned to skate. Roller or ice. When you were a foster kid from birth to age eighteen, you weren’t allowed such luxuries. But Rey was content to watch Ben with his best friend, Poe, and his two kids as they whirled around the ice, shrieking and giggling and racing each other end to end. Poe's wife, Kaydel, had promised the kids a day at the rink, but at the last minute she was called back to the hospital for an emergency surgery. So naturally, Ben volunteered their company instead. Not that she minded. Mitaka and Phanny were adorable, and it was always nice to get out of the house.

Rey adjusted the collar of her sweater, which was a little too snug. Her eyes wandered around the rink, and she didn't miss the way Ben peeked over every now and again, checking on her. She waved brightly each time, ignoring the nameless dread coiling in her stomach. 

For the past few months, this dread had been steadily building. It had started as a vague pang, sometimes an ache deep beneath her skin, but it gradually grew to a physical hurt, like a heavy weight in her gut. She was convinced it was, during her worst moments, an actual presence in her mind. A sly, malignant presence. It often felt like a separate part of her—this weight, this dread—but she understood that of course it was _her_. Not separate, not disconnected, just new. To distance herself from it would be to distance herself from ownership of it, and she couldn't do that. 

This part spoke a truth she wasn’t ready to hear. 

But as she watched Ben race his tiny Phanny across the ice, as she watched him play-fight a six-year-old Mitaka, it became clear to her that the truth existed whether she was willing to hear it or not. 

Rey grappled for a long moment. Her skin itched,and her temples throbbed, and she fought for even a slice of the mental stability she used to have years ago. Lately, however, it seemed to disappear for longer and longer periods of time. She didn’t want to have such a momentous revelation in a skating rink in the middle of the city. Not with dozens of witnesses and two impressionable kids nearby. 

But again, what she wanted didn’t seem to matter because the floodgates in her mind opened and a black tide dragged her under. The skating rink vanished. Her ears rang with a horrible, empty silence. 

If something happened to Ben, she would not make it. 

She’d known this simple truth from their fourth date. They went to a fancy French restaurant. Ben sat down across from her, tilted his head, and gave her a _look_. To this day, she still wasn't enitrely sure what he meant by it. Without a word, he slid from the booth, rounded the table, and kissed her hard on the mouth, ignoring the curious glances from other tables. With a gentle nudge, he encouraged her to scoot over so he could sit down beside her, and when his arm went around her shoulders, when his lips touched her hair, she knew. As simple as that. 

Two years later and it still rang true. 

If something happened to Ben, she would die. The grief would be unimaginable. Unendurable. She would rather drag a blade down her forearm than live in a world where he wasn't. 

To never see his smile again was unconceivable. To never listen to the minute inflections of his low voice, to never feel his strong arms wrap around her in a too-tight embrace, to never feel his lips on her forehead, on her cheeks, skimming her collarbones. Agony.

To never sit on the living room sofa and cuddle during a ridiculous romcom or absurdly plotted action movie. To never run her fingers through his thick hair in the shower, to never lick the water from his chest, to never touch his neck and his hips and his mouth. To never sing off-key to musical playlists on Spotify. To never hear his booming laugh or smell the richness of his skin. 

Agony, agony, agony. 

The strength it would take to survive him simply wasn’t there. 

She would collapse inward like a deck of cards. Implosion. A silent surrender. She would be dragged down into a dark abyss with no hope of resurfacing. There would be no light, no moving on, no glimmer of the future. There would just be her, alone, in the emptiness, surrounded by a thick wall of numb, debilitating pain, unable to speak, to cry, to scream. She would float endlessly in this space until some outside force redirected her trajectory. 

It wouldn’t take very long at all for a city bridge to look appealing. The height, the free-fall, the impact. For a bottle of pills to become...appetizing. A few swallows and then a clean descent into oblivion. For a knife’s edge to gleam with promise rather than improbability. A moment of pain in exchange for an eternty of quiet. 

Without Ben, it wouldn’t take very long for the world to become meaningless. 

If something were to happen to Ben, she would not make it. This was a truth inarguable. This was a truth so simple and so obvious to her that it existed as irrefutable fact. 

In her worst moments, she imagined the opposite scenario. 

If something happened to _Rey_ , on the other hand, the outcome would be quite different. Ben would be sad, of course, and lost, and furious probably, but in the end he would do what she herself wasn’t capable of: he would move on. He would _survive._

_He deserves better._

Sitting on the risers by herself, Ben distracted by a giggling Mitaka and no one else paying her one bit of attention, Rey sucks in a sharp breath. Pain slices straight through her chest like a surgeon’s scalpel, brutal and unrelenting. There are truths, and then there are _truths_ —this is one of them. 

_He deserves better._

Better than her, of course. Better than everything she is. Better than endless fits of insomnia and bleary good mornings. Better than half-eaten toast and twitching fingers. Better than days spent curled in bed and hands balled into fists, pressed tight to a thin-lipped mouth to keep the wails trapped inside where nobody could hear them. Better than dark days and darker nights and voices that told her nothing she did would ever matter.

Ben deserved better than her. 

This was yet another inarguable truth. Like, "The sky is blue" or "It only snows in winter!" Incontrovertible. She quickly blinked back tears, surprised by the intensity of her emotions. She wasn’t normally rattled by these types of revelations—not anymore, not after so many—but this one was worse. This one told her, bluntly, mercilessly, that the love of her life could survive her, but she could not survive him. 

This truth told her there was no happy ending just around the corner. But there was one for Ben. If she allowed it. 

_He deserves better._ And on the tail-end of that: _He will never be happy with you. Don't be selfish. Let him go._

There was only one way to do that, and she wasn’t ready. Hopefully she never would be. Hopefully it would never come to that. 

But it haunted her, this knowledge. The idea that she was holding him back somehow, that he would be happier with someone else, in another life. Maybe this imaginary partner would already be pregnant. Ben wanted kids more than anything—a big, happy family like the one he never had. But she was young and scared by the idea of babies, which he said he understood. ( _He could be lying,_ the voices whispered.) 

But Ben promised he would wait. _I want forever with you,_ he’d told her once. _So I’ll wait as long as it takes, Rey. No matter what._

She felt terrible not giving him this one thing when he deserved _all_ the things. He wouldn’t have to wait if he’d just found someone older, nicer, happier, prettier, _better._ She knew, even if he didn't, that she wasn't worth waiting for. 

_Enough._ Her thoughts were spiraling again. Rey struggled to her feet and signaled she was going to the bathroom. But Ben wasn’t paying attention, so she turned and left. Her heart ached, and her lungs felt too small, as if someone with impossibly large hands was blocking off all her air. 

Maybe one day it would be just as easy. Make the decision, turn, and go. 

Disappear.

⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️

“...Rey?”

With a start, she blinks, and the house is suddenly awash in sunshine. Mid-morning sunshine. The street is alive with cars and people of the neighborhood out for a jog or a walk with their dog. 

Behind her, Ben yawns, kisses her forehead, and meanders over to the coffee pot. She listens with half an ear as he turns on the sink and bumbles through the cupboard for a mug. He loves the one shaped like a dog’s head because it reminds him of his childhood pet schnauzer, Boba Fett, who used to slobber on all his toys. Sounds kind of terrifying, honestly—and gross—but the mug always makes him smile. 

Rey absently sips at her tea. It’s no longer hot, or even lukewarm, but ice cold. Like it’s been in the fridge. She frowns and glances into the kitchen. Maybe something’s wrong with the kettle. She’ll have to get Ben to look at it. 

“What are you doing up so early?” 

She dumps her cold tea down the drain and avoids the question. How can she be _up_ when she never really goes down in the first place? “Do you have to go in today?”

Ben and his work partner Armitage Hux own a tech company. Hux is not exactly a stand-up type of guy, but he’s brilliant, so Ben puts up with his petty shit. She doesn’t really understand what they do, but she knows they create software. Like Microsoft. (She _thinks_ that’s what it is, anyway.) And they make tons of money. (This she knows for sure; they always pay their bills on time.) They can easily afford a destination wedding, like Ben wants.

_He deserves better._

Her eyes drift to Ben, who’s whistling as he channel surfs in the living room. His legs are crossed at the ankles, feet propped on the coffee table, one hand on the remote, the other draped across the back of the sofa. Casual. At ease. _Home._ Her chest tightens so painfully she brings a hand to her sternum and presses down. 

_He doesn’t realize yet,_ she tells herself calmly. _But he’ll understand._

A life with her is no life at all, really. 

Rey drifts down the hallway like a shadow, barely aware of her surroundings. Peeking into the bedroom, she sees the drawer is back in its place within the nightstand. Again, she doesn’t remember sorting through the rest of the crap stuffed inside, but she must have because the floor is clean and the piles are gone. 

No loose ends.

In the master bathroom, she picks up a half-empty bottle of body lotion. Black Cherry Merlot. For the life of her, she can’t remember what it smells like, even though she’s pretty sure she used it just yesterday. Well, whatever. In the trash it goes. Followed by an old bottle of shampoo, a crusty-capped mouthwash, a baggie of broken Q-tips, and soap that’s been there for at least two years. 

She nearly screams when Ben puts his hands on her shoulders. “What’s gotten into you? Spring cleaning is notoriously done in the _spring,_ you know.”

“Very funny,” she says weakly, hands trembling. “I just realized there’s a lot I don’t need. That’s all.”

Ben kisses the back of her neck and hugs her from behind. “Okay, baby. You know," he adds teasingly, "I don’t mind if you do the same to my stuff. I'm sure my parents will buy us lots of unnecessary shit once we're married.” 

She doesn’t answer, and when more than a few seconds pass in silence, Ben gently turns her around. He studies her closely and frowns. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she says quickly, avoiding his eyes. Jesus. She needs to pull herself together. 

“Something’s wrong.” His voice is firm now—no longer questioning. 

“No, I’m fine,” she insists, and her mind sings, _I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine._ “There’s just—you know—I—”

Ben’s phone blares, cutting her off. He curses and glances at the display. “Speak of the devil. My mother.”

Breathing a sigh of relief, Rey backs out of reach. “You should answer that. Maybe it’s important. I’ll make breakfast.”

She leaves the bathroom before he can argue. There’s a short pause, and then: “Hi, Mom.” He’ll be busy with Leia for the next twenty minutes, at least. 

In the kitchen, she makes toast and eggs and bacon on autopilot, arranges it on a plate for Ben, then sits down on the couch in the living room. The TV is on, but low, nothing but a dull hum. Her mind blanks again—it goes somewhere far, far away where time loops back on itself—and when she resurfaces, Ben is off the phone, and he’s standing behind the couch, and he’s asking her something, he’s asking her if—

“Did you eat already?” 

“Mm. Yeah,” she says distractedly, staring out of the window again. What time is it? Why aren’t there any clocks around when she needs one? Pain flares in her chest, and her vision dims at the corners. _How can I feel so much and so little at the same time?_ she wonders faintly. _I don’t understand. I don’t fucking understand._

“Sometimes it’s all I can do not to cry myself to sleep every night!” The laugh track runs, and the gorgeous sitcom starlet winks. Like it’s silly and fun and cute. Like it’s just a joke—a stupid, meaningless joke. Like there aren’t people who live this reality. 

Forget to eat one meal, and the next, and the next.

Stare a little too long at something sharp.

Blink and it’s been a month. Blink again and it's been a year. 

Wear the same clothes for days and days and days, and now it’s next week and you’re still dressed in the same gray sweats, the same gray hoodie, still empty and weak and confused.

Ben is still speaking, she realizes, and her head turns, and it turns, and it turns, and it’s years and months and days and only seconds until she’s looking up at him. He’s so handsome from this angle—every angle. His height and his width and his kind eyes and crooked smile and big nose. She breathes, and it’s like needles in her chest, in her throat, behind her eyes, and she stares blankly because she doesn’t know what else to do.

She doesn’t know what else to do. 

“—wants me to come over tomorrow and see if there’s a virus or something. I don’t know, she wasn’t very clear about that part—”

“Tomorrow?” Her voice rises in panic. “What’s happening tomorrow?”

Ben gives her an odd look. “My mother. She asked me to drive over to her house and check out her desktop. She’s been getting spam emails and—” He pauses, looking at her closely. There’s a slowly dawning understanding there, formless now, but it'll soon take shape if she lets it. 

Rey quickly drags the words from her mouth before he fits the pieces together. Ben is smart—once he gets an inkling of an idea, the rest will follow until the picture is crystal clear. “When?” she manages hoarsely. “I mean, what time does Leia want you to—to visit?” 

“I was thinking after dinner, maybe seven. We can—”

But she isn’t listening. Blood pounds in her head. After seven. He wants to go after seven. It’ll be dark out by then, and she’ll be tired from lack of sleep, and her bones will ache, and she’ll want nothing more than to submerge herself in a quiet darkness. 

_No!_ she screams silently, but her mind crows, _Yes!_ and this is louder. This is more powerful than the doubt, the confusion, the fear. 

This is it. 

And just like that, she knows, and the world around her goes very, very quiet, her mind wiped free of thought. A clean slate, an empty room. 

After seven. 

She is the girl, and the girl smiles, and the girl tells Ben that’s fine, that’s perfect, they’ll bring Leia some dessert, and Ben smiles back, and he kisses her forehead before he retrieves his coffee, and the girl doesn’t feel, and she doesn’t think, and then she simply fades. Because the girl makes a conscious decision to disconnect from that moment forward, the girl chooses to not exist—but the shell that's left behind just doesn’t know it yet.

So the shell waits.


	3. goodbye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This warning bears repeating, as this is a particularly brutal chapter (and story as a whole): **Do not read this if you are not in a good headspace. Reread the tags if necessary.**

1 A.M.

There’s a lost bird outside their bedroom window. 

Eyes glazed with exhaustion, Rey sits in a plush blue armchair in the corner nearest the bed. She’s in pajamas, wrapped up in a thick wool blanket, despite the heat blazing through an open vent. Normally she would complain, nag Ben to lower the thermostat two degrees, or four, or—well, to a degree that makes the house feel less like a sauna. Normally she would snuggle against him in bed, annoyed with herself for being awake at this hour but secretly happy to have the opportunity to watch Ben unobserved. 

Normally. 

The unseen bird twitters, its song shrill and unsettlingly haunting, like a church dirge. There’s a single lit streetlamp spilling buttery yellow light across the pavement. There are no cars, delivery trucks, or bicycles at this hour. No friendly toot of a horn or the squeal of distressed tires. There’s the low rush of wind, signaling distant traffic, but otherwise the night is still, and silent, and serene. 

The bird chirps again, and Rey wonders how it got to be so lost. 

_Haven’t you noticed?_ she thinks wearily, toying with the frayed edge of the blanket. _It’s dark out now. Go to sleep._

As if in response, the bird sings a sharp note that pierces the stillness of the night. Rey winces. 

She’s struggled with insomnia all her life. Since she was six, or five, or maybe even four. As far back as she remembers, at any rate. Falling asleep is an exercise in patience—usually it takes an hour, sometimes forty-five minutes if she’s lucky. But she doesn’t _stay_ asleep. No, that would be too easy, too kind.

If there is one thing Rey has learned about the world, it’s this: there is nothing kind about this life. 

Her nights consist of tossing, turning, flailing, gasping. Night terrors. That vivid falling sensation that's usually so sudden she’s not merely jolted but _ripped_ from sleep. Too hot one minute, unbearably cold the next. Never comfortable. Never relaxed. Always on the verge of some new, unpleasant surprise to drag her out of sleep. 

A year ago, her insomnia intensified. She’s lucky to get four hours now. Not even consecutive hours, either—at all. She hides her exhaustion from Ben by downing three cups of coffee in the morning and popping 5-Hour Energy tablets like tic tacs. It’s been working well enough—except for after-dinner hours when suppressing her yawns is hopeless—but she doesn’t like to imagine how long she might have kept it up if plans hadn’t changed. Months more? _Years?_

A tree branch sways and dips, leaves rustling. The world outside is too shadowed for her to make out any details, but Rey leans forward and squints anyway. Still no sign of the bird, but she knows it’s there. Restless, confused, maybe. She doesn’t know what’s wrong with it, why its family or friends don’t guide it back to the nest. It chirps, and chirps again—an almost plaintive cry, as if asking, _Why won’t you answer?_

Rey leans back in her chair and sighs. It’s one o’clock in the morning. She has a long way to go.

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2 A.M.

Last Christmas, a few weeks after the trip to the skating rink, Rey and Ben visited his family for a big celebratory dinner. It was a grand affair, of course—Leia Organa would suffer nothing less than a five-course meal and an entire coterie of fawning relatives on the biggest holiday of the year. 

After hours of silent debate, Rey wore tight black jeans and a red silk shirt. The fabric was soft on her skin—she rarely wore anything but cotton. Her skin was extremely sensitive—so were her nerves. She even did her hair in the unusual three-bun style she knew Ben liked. The dinner was going to be long, at least four hours, but she had come to expect that with the Solos. 

When they arrived, hand-in-hand and pink-cheeked from the cold, family members swarmed Ben. They swallowed him whole and didn’t spit him out for a torturously long time. His hand grappled for hers, reluctant to let go, but she smiled and made sure he read the look on her face, the one that said, _Go. This is your family. Go._

 _Family._ Still only a concept for Rey, an idea, not a reality. 

In an out-of-the-way corner, Rey picked at her cuticles, nervous and weak-kneed around so many strangers in such close quarters. She offered tentative smiles to nameless cousins and longtime neighbors. Several friends from Ben’s college days were there, and she didn’t miss the way their gazes swept over her with surprise. She could read them with ease. _Her?_ these looks seemed to say. _Ben Solo picked_ this _one? Why, she’s hardly out of primary school!_

The jokes about their age difference grew old _real_ fast. 

Eventually, Rey slumped down into a vacant armchair, her nerves wrecked. She was exhausted—by her spiraling thoughts, by the strain of avoiding all the stares. Ben had been tossing her tight smiles the entire night, an old aunt on one arm, Leia grasping his other shoulder with a white-tipped claw. Each time Rey caught his gaze, she smiled and shrugged like, _What are you gonna do?_

But she was tired of pretending. 

Rey crossed her legs, conscious of the curious stares she was receiving from Ben’s college friends, and absently pulled strips of loose skin off her thumb. The pain was more of a minor annoyance than anything, but the sensation grounded her. Blood beaded around her cuticle, but she remained focused on the calm it brought and not the mess it made. 

She was easily overwhelmed, not by people themselves but by their emotions. All of her foster homes had encouraged what her old therapist coined _repression._ If she was sad, she had to hide it. If she was angry, she could only swallow it down and move on. Scared, confused, happy, excited. The emotion didn’t matter. She was commanded to keep herself in check, lest she find an open palm swinging at her face. 

The Solo family was loud and boisterous and _emotional._ So much enthusiasm, so much joy. It unsettled her stomach, and the more intense these emotions, the further Rey retreated into herself. Call it a defense mechanism—her therapist from two years ago certainly had, and often. All she wanted was to remain unseen. It wouldn’t do to call attention to herself. She had learned the hard way what attention entailed.

Punishment. 

At one point, Rey looked up, jolted from her thoughts. Blood was smeared all over her thumb, and for the first time she worried someone would notice. Sometimes she went into a bit of a trance with these kind of things—nail biting, skin pulling, neck scratching—and she could be lost for an hour or more. It didn’t hurt. These habits calmed her in a way most things failed to. 

Rey sucked her thumb into her mouth to draw off the blood. Wouldn’t do for someone to see her like that—a mess. It would reflect poorly on Ben. 

When she looked up again, her eyes immediately went to him. It didn’t matter where he was, how far away, or what he was doing—she always knew right where to find him. Ben was the magnet and she the small circle of metal, forever drawn into his orbit. A smile pulled at her lips when she saw him standing across the room, in front of the wall-to-ceiling bookcases. Leia loved her cookbooks, and before his death, Han had collected a truly astounding number of automotive magazines over the years. 

But the smile gradually faded as she absorbed the scene. 

Ben was talking to one of his old friends from college, a tall blonde girl named Heska. She was gorgeous, and accomplished, and well-liked. In one hand she held a half-full glass of chardonnay; the other was propped on a bookshelf, slim fingers tapping a book spine. She said something that made Ben laugh, and a faint pink blush spread across her cheeks.

A curious sense of detachment stole over Rey then. She observed with a clinical sort of interest that the two of them made a good pair. Both tall and handsomely dressed, both blessed with stunning good looks. Heska wore a matching set of gold jewelry—necklace, earrings, bracelet, rings. She exuded confidence, intelligence, good humor. 

_If only you had such attributes._ The voice snaked through her thoughts, leaving a slimy ripple in its wake. _Poor, stupid Rey._

She smoothed a hand down her chest, wincing. Well, when it rains, it pours, and she was never one to shy away from pain. So, unable to resist, Rey allowed herself to imagine their future, Ben and this charming girl Heska. 

She ignored the tightness in her chest—a sensation she had grown familiar with these past few months. It was background noise. She could ignore it quite easily now. All she had to do was think those three magic words— _Ben deserves better_ —and suddenly she was able to see things that otherwise would’ve been unclear. Objectivity was everything, and this pain paved the way for impartial observation. 

Ben was successful and needed a wife to match his quality of life. Ben was intelligent and deserved someone who could keep up when he made obscure references and jokes. Ben, she knew, had an endless well of love in his heart, and it only made sense for him to give it to someone worthy. 

_He deserves better than you, Rey._

This thought had existed for weeks now. It should be tattooed on the backs of her eyelids by this point, for the amount of times she thought it. She had only allowed herself to put the idea into words for the first time at the ice rink. But it made so much sense, she didn’t understand how she hadn’t seen it sooner. 

A part of her wondered if Ben knew. If he _knew_ he deserved better. She didn’t think he did. Someone like Ben didn’t stick around when they understood such a monumental fact. They moved on. They left. They sought _better._ So no, Rey didn’t believe Ben was aware, for the simple fact that he was still here. 

Which made things complicated.

She stared at the two of them over the rim of her plastic cup, considering. It would be best to let him go, right? After a second, she nodded to herself. Yes, it probably would. She was dead-weight. But she was also selfish, and unkind, and greedy—she wanted Ben to herself. The thought of life without him was unbearable. Besides, if she left, it would cause him pain, and that was the very last thing on earth she wanted to do. It had to be his decision. 

Love was a vise around her neck. She often resented how much she loved Ben because it was keeping her _here_ —it was keeping her alive. Her love was rooting her in place when all she wanted was to—to _leave._ He was her reason for getting up in the morning, for returning to school, for buying heavy winter clothes because he didn’t want her to be cold and rain gear because he didn't want her to get sick. He was the only one to make her smile, the only one who touched her like she mattered. 

And he deserved better.

_Ben deserves better, goddamnit._

Trembling, Rey gently set her cup on a nearby end table. A burst of laughter rolled out from the kitchen on a wave of merriment. A rock-and-roll version of "Jingle Bells" played faintly under the excited cacophony of overlapping voices. The house smelled like garlic and cinnamon bread. 

And she knew that there was only one way Ben would move on.

If she left him no other choice.

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3 A.M.

She dozes off once or twice in the armchair, but her mind will not allow anything more. Each time her lids slide closed, she soon jolts back awake, unexplainably terrified she'll somehow miss her window of opportunity. 

There are plans to be made. Precautions to review. Supplies to be checked and rechecked and even triple checked. Again and again and again until she has it all memorized. Until she can recite the steps forward and back, until she knows it like the back of her hand. 

She wears her shell like a suit of armor. The presence of the shell comes and goes in waves. When she doesn’t want to think, she pulls it over herself. No feelings—no fear, no doubts, no frustration. This is a game of waiting now. A series of moments she must suffer. 

Just one moment to the next to the next until there are none left. 

On the bed, Ben shifts and sighs in his sleep, and she rests her head on the back of the chair, angled to watch over him.

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4 A.M.

Rey briefly rises from her blanket cocoon to grab her phone. It’s charging on the nightstand, and when she gently unplugs the cord, her phone makes a soft _beep-eep!_ to inform her the battery’s maxed out. 

Good. That’s good. 

One by one by one, she deactivates all her accounts.

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5 A.M.

She wonders if someone will find her pencil case in the parking lot on campus. If they’ll use the pastel highlighters. If they’ll slap a Post-It note on a kitchen cabinet, a bathroom door, a study desk to remind them of something important. 

She hopes it finds a good home.

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6 A.M.

Thinking becomes unbearable, and so Rey calls the shell back. 

It doesn't take much. They're one and the same now. 

And so the shell sits in the armchair by the bedroom window and watches a golden dawn crest the distant horizon. It is not an uninterrupted view. There are houses with peaked roofs in the way, and winter-white trees, and even a distant corporate building or two, but the shell sees enough to be satisfied. 

Dawn. A new day. 

The shell’s mind is the epicenter of a storm that’s been raging for years. It’s been raging all her life, in fact, and only now, on this day, in this house, has she managed to reach a place where she is untouchable, where there is no pain, no hurt, no sadness—there is no anxiety, no terror, to scorch her throat. There is no craving to light the veins in her arms on fire. There is no sharp agony to puncture her heart like a popped balloon. 

There is just the shell. A blank void. An un-space where she can wrap herself in darkness, in quiet unfeeling, and disappear. 

In this emptiness, her mind latches on to small details. Meaningless details, really, but ones that make her feel marginally better anyway. The shell will not have to go to school. The shell will not have to make breakfast or lunch or dinner. The shell will not have to shower, or eat, or sleep. All the shell has to do is wait. 

That’s all that’s left.

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7 A.M.

With a sigh and a grunt and a massive stretch of his long, long limbs, Ben rises from the bed. He rubs sleep from his eyes like a little kid—hands balled into fists, knuckles digging deep into the sockets. He heaves a tremendous yawn, arms bending up and behind his head. The hem of his t-shirt rides up to reveal smooth skin, pale and hard and lined with faint scars. 

She remembers kissing those scars for the first time. How he shuddered and went quiet beneath her. How he whispered her name like she was the only reason he drew breath. 

Scars. His body is riddled with so many scars. On his stomach and chest, his forearms and biceps, his calves, his neck, his face. Remnants from his days as a wild boy, a tornado of rage and despair, a malevolent force that ripped down walls and ruined homes and tore people apart. Leftover vestiges from a bad life. His criminal past. His lost years.

Ben doesn’t notice her in the armchair. With another jaw-cracking yawn, he disappears into the hallway. The bathroom door shuts a second later. Rey considers getting up, maybe tip-toeing into the kitchen so she can pretend she’s been there all along. But the idea is immediately discarded. Too much effort. She likes it right here. 

Heavy footsteps in the hallway. They tread into the kitchen. She listens as he stops in his tracks, imagines him looking slowly around at the apartment—the living and dining rooms, the kitchen, the front lawn—and then he quickly doubles back. She counts his steps— _one-two, three-four, five-six_ —until his shadow once again spills into the doorway. 

“There you are.” His voice is low and rough, still a bit hoarse from sleep. 

She smiles weakly and pulls the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “Here I am.”

He’s by her side in three steps, looming over her like a dark god. Sometimes she gets the sense that he’s holding back, that he’s trying very hard to control himself when they're alone together. Like if he lets go, even for a moment, he’ll devour her. She’s not sure what to make of that, what it means. It’s a remnant from his darker days, when he fought and stole and raged without remorse. 

Without a word, Ben picks her up with ease and settles down in her place, arranging her in his lap until she’s cuddled into his chest. He lays his cheek on top of her head and releases a slow breath. 

“You didn’t sleep.”

He doesn’t ask, so she doesn’t pretend to misunderstand. “No.”

Ben hums low in his throat—an unhappy sound. “Tell me why.”

“Just wasn’t tired, I guess.” It’s an effort to keep her voice light, but she’s determined not to raise any alarms. One night of sleeplessness never killed anyone.

“Do you have any melatonin left?” In the summer, he bought her a big bottle of 5 mg melatonin pills, but they only worked for a few weeks. Then her body grew a tolerance and completely rejected them. They’ve been nothing but useless since. 

“I don’t think so.” She presses her mouth to the hollow of his throat. He smells lovely here—familiar. Reminds her of home. 

Ben absently runs his hands up and down her body. He touches her wrists, looping his fingers around twice. He skims up her forearm and along the curve of her neck. His hands grip her hips, press lightly on her stomach, encircle her thighs. She doesn’t realize what he’s doing until his hand snakes under her shirt and cups her ribs. 

He breathes in sharply through his nose. “Rey.”

She doesn’t like that voice. It promises nothing good. She squirms in his lap, kicking her feet as she tries to sit up, get away, put some distance between them, but Ben’s having none of it. His arms go around her waist, and he hugs her tight, pinning her arms between them. She avoids his eyes. 

“You’ve lost weight.” Something enters his voice—something heavy. “A lot of weight.” 

“Not that much,” she insists tiredly. “Only a few pounds.” 

“How much?” He dips his head and gently nudges her cheek until she looks up.

“...I’m not sure.”

 _Twenty-three._ Her mind instantly recalls the number on the scale from yesterday. It's imbedded so deeply there's no chance of forgetting. _Twenty-three pounds, ten ounces._

“If you’re having trouble eating—"

“It’s not that.” She lays her palms flat on his chest. Feels his heart beating like crazy. Guilt swamps her. _I’m stressing him out,_ she thinks, struggling not to cry. _Goddamnit, why can’t I do anything right?_

“Then what is it?” he demands, trailing his lips down her cheek, across her jaw. He lets them hover over her mouth, his breath hot and shallow. “Tell me, Rey.”

“I—I’m—” And the words are there, a lifeline. “I’m fine. Really.”

Now it’s a symphony in her head. _I’m fine! I’m fine! I’m fine, fine, fine!_ Soaring, trilling, mounting towards a crescendo. 

There’s a long pause. Ben doesn’t speak. He doesn’t move. She senses him thinking, but she doesn’t know about precisely what. _This isn’t a big deal,_ she wants to tell him. _This is nothing._

She doesn’t understand why he’s so upset. So she’s lost some weight. Who cares? It’s just a few pounds. Girls on fad diets do it all the time. 

“We’re going to see a doctor about this,” he says finally. His voice tells her there’s no room for argument. Not even for negotiation. Not _we should_ see a doctor. Not _maybe._ Not even the gentler _why don’t we._

“I’m fine,” she repeats. A weak defense, but it’s her only one.

“You’re too thin,” he says, not listening. His eyebrows are furrowed, mouth tilted in a deep frown. “I don’t like it.” 

“Okay.” Her voice is sharp, abrupt. Irritation sizzles in her chest. What does it matter if she gives up, gives in? What difference does it make? 

She pushes against his chest, furious with herself and with him for caring about something so stupid. One of his hands slides to the back of her neck and tightens, forcing her still. 

“You’ll go?” He doesn’t sound convinced. 

“I said _okay_ ,” she snaps, twisting in his arms. The pressure in her chest is building. She needs to get _out,_ she needs to _leave,_ she needs to calm down before her fucking _head_ explodes—

The wary expression on his face dissolves, and then he’s kissing her, lips moving on hers, roving down her neck, over her collarbones. He’s murmuring, _Don’t be angry with me, please, baby, I can’t stand it,_ and his hands are tangled in her hair, and he’s everywhere, he’s _everything,_ and she doesn’t know how she’s going to leave him, she doesn’t know how, she doesn’t know, she doesn’t, she—

( _He deserves better._ )

—And the reminder is enough. Like a breath of fresh air. Like a punch to the gut. It rips her completely out of the moment. Rey breaks the kiss, both of them breathing heavily, and before the glaze in his eyes disappears, she scrambles out of his lap, mumbling, “Bathroom,” under her breath. 

The mirror over the sink shows a stark reflection. Too pale face. Chapped lips. Sunken eyes ringed with purple. Her cheekbones jut starkly from her face, and her collarbones stick out like metal rods—thin and stiff and straight. It hurts to look at them. 

So she doesn’t. Instead, she opens the linen closet and yanks out a clean hoodie she stashed there last week. It’s one of Ben’s, which means it’s four sizes too big, and the hem comes down to her knees. But she doesn’t care. It covers her arms and chest, and when she zips it all the way up to the neck, her collarbones disappear. 

Rey flicks on the faucet in the sink and lets the water run. Her legs give out, and she drops clumsily on the lid of the toilet.

She stares at the bathtub.

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8 A.M.

They’re eating breakfast. Ben’s watching her closely over the rim of his coffee mug, and she pretends she doesn’t notice. He’s already asked her a hundred different times if she’s okay, if she’s hurt or upset, and a hundred different times she reassured him. _Nothing’s wrong, I’m just tired, don’t worry about me, I’m fine._

 _I’m fine._

Either her body has slowed down, or everything else in the world has instead. She’s unreasonably calm, even without the protection of the shell. In her mind, The Plan pulses brightly as if written in golden script. She doesn’t even have to consciously think about what’s going to happen. The Plan exists in her arms and legs and neck and fingers. It exists in the knuckles on her left hand and the smooth skin of her kneecaps. There is no longer any need for decision-making. 

Now, so close to the end, it’s just a matter of waiting. 

Ben’s washing dishes at the sink. His back is to her, but she sees the glint of his eyes in the reflection of the window over the sink. There are different paths she might take here. She could reassure him, again, that all is fine. She could step up behind him and wrap her arms around his waist, fit herself snugly against him. Sometimes they don't need words; sometimes they just simply understand one another. Or she could disappear back upstairs—maybe he'll follow. Maybe he won’t. 

She could, conceivably, do all of these things, or none of them.

Instead, she admires Ben’s hands. Those hands that have touched her face, and her hips, and her hair. Those hands that have hugged and soothed and cradled. Those hands that have fixed door frames, and toaster ovens, and broken shoelaces. Those hands that are strong and big and warm. Hands that have touched her everywhere. 

He sets aside a clean bowl, and she admires his back. A finely muscled back, with broad shoulders, bracketed by firm biceps, and a chest that blocks out the world when the world gets too hard. A chest that holds a heart—a heart that pulses beneath her ear at night, steady and strong.

Ben flicks off the faucet, dries his hands on a towel, and makes more coffee. He casts furtive glances her way, and she admires his lips while she pretends not to notice. Those lips that have kissed every inch of her skin. Those lips that have pursed and smiled and pouted. She’s traced those lips with her tongue, transfixed by their plushness. 

He looks at her then and speaks, the words low and foreign like another language, and she must say something back because Ben smiles. 

Ben smiles, and it is the only thing in the world she will miss.

⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️

9 A.M.—11:59 A.M.

She sits by the living room window and blinks.

Three hours. Gone. 

Just like that.

⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️

12 P.M.

Rey hesitates in the doorway. She hopes she’s going about this the right way. The Plan is firm, but it is also so very delicate. But there's no going back, so she nods to herself and places a wrapped box on the counter. Ben glances up from his lunch—a turkey burger and greek salad. 

“What’s this?”

There’s a faint roaring in her ears like the ocean through a conch shell. Not unpleasant, but faintly distracting. Rey asks if he will give the box to Leia. She apologizes and explains that she is not feeling well. Headache and an upset stomach. Nothing to worry about. She wants to know if he will be okay driving to Leia’s alone.

His face melts from confusion to concern in a blink, and he reaches for her forehead. She flinches back, just slightly, but Ben’s hand freezes in mid-air. 

“That’s not a problem,” he says slowly, watching her with eyes that see too much, with eyes that know too much. 

But they do not know this.

She says thank you. She says, with a weak smile, that she will go lie down now. Upstairs, of course, in the dark of their bedroom. She touches the back of his hand and tells him that she loves him. 

And then she leaves.

⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️

1 P.M.—2:30 P.M

She’s too buzzed to sleep. 

Her toes twitch restlessly, and she spreads her fingers over their duvet. It’s been tucked in at the edges of the mattress, just like the sheets, because Ben loves order. The bedroom smells vaguely like clean laundry and a hint of his aftershave. Familiar smells. Home smells. 

She stares resolutely at the ceiling and counts up to one hundred and then back down to one. She doesn’t want to think about _home._

⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️

3 P.M.

Rey’s still blinking at the blank white ceiling when the door creaks open. 

Her eyes have long since adjusted to the dark, so the room is completely visible to her. The bed, the armchair, the dresser and picture frames and bookcase. She sees it all. The curtains are pulled over the windows, and it’s raining out anyway, so the room has been plunged into a deep darkness. 

Ben shuffles into the bedroom. She doesn’t move. Her eyes are fixed on the ceiling. She doesn’t know what she’s feeling because it feels like nothing. Something beyond numbness, beyond even a blank calm. She’s just...here now. 

A shell.

He whispers her name and settles on the edge of the mattress. This time, when he puts the back of his hand to her forehead, she doesn’t flinch. The sudden weight is grounding, and she blinks back to herself, relieved. Those vacant moments are the worst of all. 

“How are you feeling?” His voice is soft, careful. She’s not sure what to make of that. It could just be because of the atmosphere. Or it could be something else. 

_He can’t suspect,_ she tells herself, feeling none of the usual panic. _There's no way he suspects._

_Fine._ The word nearly tumbles from her lips. _I feel fine._ But that, more than anything, will likely be an indication of the opposite—that something is, in fact, very wrong. 

“Tired,” she says instead, and that’s true. It’s been true for months now. Years. 

He grunts, and his hand skims down her neck. His fingers apply just the slightest bit of pressure, and she remembers—suddenly, randomly—how much he loved to choke her while they fucked. Back _when_ they fucked. His long fingers clamped on the sides of her neck, his thrusts rough and relentless, the two of them gasping like there wasn't enough oxygen in the room for them both. How he would lick up the column of her throat, soothing the faint bruises peppering her skin.

But it’s been weeks now. Weeks of minimal contact. All this time she’s been steadily working towards a degree of separation, and that doesn’t just happen overnight. A degree by itself is nothing, but as the days pass and the degrees build, suddenly they're on opposite sides of a very large space. 

“Rey,” he says, and her heart stutters because she hears it in his voice. She hasn’t been careful enough. “I’m worried about you.”

A neon sign flashes in her mind: **DAMAGE CONTROL.**

“Oh?” she asks, keeping her own voice light and unconcerned. Dissuade, reroute, deflect. “Why?”

She senses him studying her in the dark. Her expression remains placid. For the first time all day, genuine fear threatens to wash over her. This needs to happen, and it needs to happen today. There are no second chances, no “better-luck-next-time.” 

“I’m not sure,” he admits gruffly, stroking her cheek. “Sometimes you feel very far away from me.”

She shakes her head and makes a noise of disagreement. 

“If there’s something bothering you,” he continues quietly, “I want you to tell me. If I’ve done something to upset you—”

The ache flares, and Rey almost gasps at the pain. The idea of him feeling _responsible_ — No. That's ridiculous. How can he possibly think he’s at fault? In _any_ way? Doesn’t he understand? Doesn’t he _see_? She’s doesn't belong here anymore. This life is a test, and she's failed it. He means well, but he’s only making this far more complicated than it needs to be.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she says flatly. _Keep him away._ “I’m just tired, Ben. I want to sleep.”

He bites his lip, and she nearly reaches for him. His hand moves in slow circles on her stomach. His brain works very loud and very fast--of course it does, he's brilliant--and she senses the gears turning, switching, connecting like lightning. 

“Okay,” he says finally, relenting. “I’ll be back to check on you in an hour.”

He kisses her forehead and rises, casting her an indecipherable look, and when the door clicks closed, she blinks and—

⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️

4 P.M.

The door opens again. Ben pads across the carpet with heavy, resolute footsteps.

“Rey?”

This time he doesn’t just sit on the edge of the bed. He climbs onto the mattress, sliding beneath the covers, his body curving around hers. She feels his warmth and burrows into it despite herself. Her fingers hook into his shirt, and she presses her forehead to his shoulder.

“Hey, baby,” he whispers, stroking gentle fingers through her hair. “Are you hungry? You skipped lunch.”

Rey doesn’t answer. She breathes in the scent of his shirt and commits the smell to memory. Soft and clean. It’s steadying, and her resolve, which always wavers when he touches her, hardens.

He cups her hip and rolls her to her side. She allows it, this maneuvering, because she’s tired of fighting. Her bones are liquid. She is a puppet, or a doll.

“Let me make you some soup.”

“...Maybe later.” She nuzzles into his chest, eyes closed, thinking, _Let me have this. Just this one moment._

He groans—a tortured sound. “I’m not leaving until you agree to eat, Rey.”

She mumbles into his shirt, and he gently pries her face away until they’re nose to nose. His eyes are dark and hooded—unreadable. She knows his heart is beating at a slightly elevated rate—she feels it through his chest. A drumbeat on her cheek. 

“This is nonnegotiable,” he says, voice low and uncharacteristically hard. “You’ll eat something, and then tomorrow or sometime next week we’ll bring you to the doctor.” 

“Okay,” she says, because agreeing is easier now. Tomorrow, next week, a year from now. Meaningless. 

Ben presses his mouth to her forehead and inhales shakily. “I’ll do whatever it takes to make you feel better. Whatever it takes.” 

Invisible claws slash viciously at her chest. The concern in his voice rips through her like a dagger. _You’re hurting him!_ she berates herself. _He’s in pain because of you! Stupid, selfish bitch._

“I’m tired,” she whispers, in a barely-there voice. It’s so simple to use this as an excuse when it’s true. Maybe not the only truth, but certainly the one that matters most.

Ben kisses the side of her neck and rises from the bed. Her fingers detach from his shirt and flop lifelessly to the sheets. Her tongue almost betrays her--she nearly calls him back. He leaves the bedroom and returns less than ten minutes later. He must’ve been letting the soup simmer before he even entered the room. 

Rey drags herself upright and holds out her hands. He eyes her suspiciously for a long moment, but eventually allows her to hold the bowl. The first few spoonfuls go down like melted wax—thick and cloying and tasteless. Her stomach growls unhappy, and she has to swallow several times between each spoonful to avoid vomiting. 

Ben watches closely, not saying anything, stroking her leg and occasionally sighing. She’s not sure if this sound is meant as an expression of relief or exasperation. Half an hour crawls by, and she’s only managed to down a quarter of the bowl. (Granted, it’s a large bowl; they both have enormous appetites.) 

“Keep eating,” he orders sternly, and then disappears through the doorway. 

She watches him go, and something inside her breaks. In a sudden fit of rage, she tosses aside the blankets and hops out of bed. The window sticks for a second in its frame, but she’s not going to be thwarted by a fucking piece of wood. 

She finally yanks up the window and unceremoniously dumps the soup out onto the lawn. A frigid gust of wind spirals through the room, freezing her in place. God, it’s so fucking _cold._ She can’t ever remember it feeling like this before in winters' past. Arctic temperatures, frost on the grass, ice in the streets. Like they live in the quiet depths of Siberia and not on the edge of a massive metropolis. 

Shaking her head, Rey tumbles back on the mattress, readjusting the sheets to make it seem like she hasn't moved. She swirls the spoon around in the empty bowl a few times; there’s maybe an inch or two left, which is good. Ben wouldn’t believe it if she somehow managed to eat it all. Lies are always best told with a little bit of true to them. 

When Ben comes back twenty minutes later, cell phone in hand, she’s still pretending to eat. The soup’s mostly cold now though, and she throws him a pained look as he takes the bowl. He glances at the contents and nods.

“That’s good enough.” 

“Great,” she says flatly, surprised to find herself vaguely annoyed. He’s treating her like an invalid. 

She burrows back under the covers and waits for him to leave. 

“I called Dr. Mothma.” 

Her spine stiffens, and she thinks, _Oh no._

“We have an appointment in two days.” 

She wants to laugh, or maybe sob. The two urges are perilously close together—nearly interchangeable. Instead she says nothing. 

Ben looms over the side of the bed and, when it becomes obvious she has nothing to say in response, smooths a hand over her hair. His kiss is light, like the gentle wings of a moth. 

“We’re going to get through this,” he says gruffly, and leaves the room.

 _Yes,_ she thinks, _you will._

⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️

5 P.M.

The bedroom door creaks open, and Ben peeks inside. She senses him there, although her eyes are tightly shut. 

She pretends to be asleep, and eventually the door closes again.

⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️

6:45 P.M.

And suddenly Ben is back.

“I won’t go,” he’s saying, running a hand through his hair. “I’ll tell my mother to call someone else, I’ll tell her—”

Rey realizes, somewhat belatedly, that he’s been here for some minutes already. Why doesn’t she remember him coming in? Her head hurts. She blinks blearily and tunes back in. 

“—not willing to leave you—”

“Ben, no,” she interrupts hoarsely, reaching blindly for him. He grasps her hand, intertwines their fingers. “You need to go, you promised—”

“I’ll wait,” he insists, and there’s an edge to his voice now. Rey’s not sure what it means, but she decides to ignore it. One issue at a time. “I don’t want to leave you.”

Something inside her screams. She pinches her thigh again and again and again until the words fade and become meaningless. _He doesn’t mean that,_ she tells herself firmly. _He doesn’t know what he’s saying. He'll be fine._

Rey holds his gaze and says firmly, “You need to go, Ben. You promised Leia. She needs you.”

And then, because maybe this time it'll be true: “I’m fine.”

And of course he argues, they go back and forth, both of them unwilling to let this go, but eventually, as Rey piles on reassurance after reassurance, Ben caves. He sighs deeply and tilts his head back, staring at the ceiling. She rakes her eyes up and down his throat, and memories of licking and biting that tender skin filter through the barrier she’s erected around such intimate memories. Kissing him there, inhaling his scent. She grinds her teeth and forces the thoughts away. 

Ben shrugs into a heavy winter coat, one foot in the master closet, and says, “I won’t be long. Two hours tops. If you need _anything_ —”

“I’ll be right here,” she says, and flinches. But it’s too dark—he doesn’t notice. His eyes alight briefly on the window, and he strides over to double-check the locks. 

Then, finally, he leans down and kisses her forehead, her cheeks, her mouth. He tells her that he loves her more than anything and will be back as soon as he can. He says that Dr. Mothma will make her feel better. He tells her to get some rest, to close her eyes, and when she opens them again he’ll be back. 

“I love you, Rey,” Ben breathes into her neck. “I’ll be right back, okay? And I’ll miss you every second.”

“Okay,” she whispers, and her throat is tight, and she wants to scream, but instead she touches his cheek, so very lightly, and he smiles, and pulls away, and then he’s gone.

The shell stirs.

⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️

7 P.M.

And now Rey and the shell are alone together.

⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️

7:10 P.M.

Rey waits ten minutes, and then ten more. 

The house is still. No sound but the low hum of the heater. 

Nothing changes, nothing moves, and so she rises from the bed, skin ice cold, and undresses. Carefully folding each item, she lays them on the mattress in a neat pile. Then it’s into a soft pair of cable-knit leggings, a loose cotton t-shirt, a pair of wool socks--all a warm brown. Her hair is loose, and she runs her fingers through the strands to untangle the knots.

A deep breath in, a slow breath out. 

Next. 

She turns off all the lights in the house. She locks all the doors and windows, even though Ben is always fastidious about home security. She considers, briefly, leaving a note, but by now she’s achieved a sort of momentum, and scribbling a few useless words will only slow her down. She grabs two items from her nightstand and one from the kitchen.

Into the master bath.

She shuts the door but does not lock it. No sense in barring access. She must be found, after all. That’s kind of the whole point. To be found as quickly as possible, before he comes home. 

Very, very carefully, she sets her cell phone on the ledge of the tub.

She turns the hot water faucet all the way to the left. In no time steam’s pouring into the tub, rising in a cloud to the ceiling, fogging the mirror and slicking her skin. She waits until the tub’s halfway full, then switches the faucet off. It wouldn’t do to drown. That’s not the way she needs this to go.

Mindful of the items on the ledge, she settles into the tub. Her clothes immediately soak up the water, the heaviness of the wet material weighing her down, and it hits her only then how weak she’s become these past few months. Skin and bones. Her shirt floats, voluminous, on the surface of the water, and underneath she perceives the jut of her ribs, the knobby balls of her kneecaps, the absurd size of her feet compared to the twigs of her angles. 

For the first time in recent memory, she’s warm. The thick clothes and steam and boiling hot water make for her own personal sauna. She wiggles her fingers. It feels nice. Like she’s wrapped up in a big hug. Warm. Safe.

She uncaps the bottle of OxyContin. 

No hesitation now. An object in motion stays in motion. She pops two, three, four pills. Dry swallows them. The acrid taste immediately makes her wince and gag, but she’s determined, and four more follow. She pauses, stares at the cell phone, hopes no one will find her search history, which—like a thoughtless amateur—she completely forgot to erase. 

Well, whatever. Hindsight. 

_Wait—how many—how many am I at now?_ Her thoughts are muddied. She’s already lost count, so just to be safe she swallows two more. Her hands shake, and when she sets the bottle on the ledge it tumbles off the opposite side, lands with a soft _clack_ , plastic on tile. 

Fine. So be it. 

She clutches her cell phone in one hand and the kitchen knife in the other. This next part is a little tricky. Cut it too close and the pills won’t have enough time to do what they’re meant to do. Cut it too _late_ and she’ll be too far gone to use the phone. 

_Okay,_ she thinks shakily, _here we go._

She brings the knife to her wrist—and stops.

She’s afraid. _Goddamnit._ She squeezes her eyes shut and grits her teeth. She doesn’t want to be afraid, she’s not _supposed_ to be afraid, but she is. 

She _is._

“No,” she whispers aloud, “no, no, _no._ ”

Her heart starts to race. She shifts in the tub, her thoughts slowing by the second. Sluggiesh and murky and vaporous. _How many? How many did I take?_ It doesn’t sit right with her that she lost count, that she doesn’t know exactly how many pills she swallowed. Too little? What if it’s not enough? Her breath catches. _What if she didn't take enough?_ But the bottle’s on the floor, and she’s already having trouble seeing straight. 

The shell steadies her hands. 

She brings the tip of the knife to her wrist and opens an emergency number in her phone. A neighbor, the one who lives to their left. Janice something? Her and her husband are always home this late at night. The Plan says to call them, and they’ll find her, and then they’ll call an ambulance.

Right?

She’s struggling now. Isn’t that The Plan? Call them because they’re close and then they’ll—do something. She needs to make sure someone’s here, someone finds her, before Ben gets back. She doesn’t want Ben to find her. She _can’t_ let that happen. He needs to— She needs to keep him safe. They’ll— The neighbors will— They can call—

She fumbles with the keypad, confused by all the numbers, and the phone slips through her fingers, slices through bathwater, and settles on the bottom of the tub. 

Oh.

Oh no.

It sits there, swaying with the movement of the water, and she watches from a distant place somewhere else, somewhere not in this tub with this phone and this knife, as the screen dies. Her thoughts tangle. Water. It’s in water. Phone’s aren’t supposed to get wet. 

Groaning, Rey sinks further into the tub. Water sloshes around her shoulders. Her grip on the knife is clumsy—her fingers are going numb—but she drags the sharp tip down her forearm. There’s no pain, which is strange. All the articles said there would be pain. The pills must be working.

She does the same to her other arm, cutting from wrist to the crease of her elbow. The knife slips free and tumbles into the tub, disappearing with a quiet splash. Her hands follow, dropping limply into her lap. The water’s clear, and then it’s not. Lines of red begin to snake through, distorting her legs, hiding the ruined phone from view. Her head drops back against the side of the tub.

 _Oh,_ she thinks dreamily. _What’s happening?_

It’s so hard to think. But she understands that something’s gone wrong. The phone—she was supposed to use the phone. She broke it, and now— Now what? Someone will find her. Maybe the neighbors? 

She groans again, and tears slip from the corners of her eyes. Oh god. Ben. She’s forgotten Ben. He can’t be the one to find her—that’s not how this is supposed to go. She had a plan—she prepared—she went over and _over_ all the details—

But the pills are on the floor, and the knife is somewhere under her thigh, and the phone is in the water, and her body’s so warm and happy, and she feels quiet and safe. She is not a she. She is fading. She is disappearing. Who is she now? 

The shell creeps up her arms, cradles her tight. _You are me now,_ it coos. _You are me, and we have just a little further to go._

And the shell thinks, _He will be better off without you._

And the shell thinks, _You are a burden._

And the shell thinks, _You cannot do this anymore._

And the shell thinks, _Goodbye._

And suddenly Rey is back. 

_Rey._

_That’s_ who she is. How could she forget? How could she ever forget herself, the person she knows the best, the person who is _she_ and _her_ and the whole world. 

The numbness vanishes, and emotion floods in. There are tears streaming from her eyes, and she’s sobbing uncontrollably, she is sobbing so hard she cannot see, and the pain is like a comet now, like a live wire, like an atomic bomb in her chest. The pain smacks her across the face, announces, _I am here!_ and brutalizes every inch, every molecule, of this girl named Rey. 

The bathroom revolves around her slowly, so slowly, and she is dizzy and exhausted and confused, and she cries because it is not fair, because she doesn’t _want_ to do this, not really, but everything hurts so much all the time—every second, every hour, every day and week and month, and she knows that it is the only way. 

_Ben,_ she thinks, drowning now in despair, but Ben is not here now, Ben is not here because she sent him away, and she hopes, she hopes, she hopes he will not be the one to find her.

 _You screwed up, Rey. You screwed it all up._

She chokes on bathwater, the acrid residue of the pills still in her mouth. Will this be the last thing she ever tastes? 

Lower and lower she sinks, until the water laps at her nose. No drowning, she doesn’t want to drown, but the water feels so nice. The ceiling swirls like a kaleidoscope above her, and she stares as her mind quiets, as the world fades, as her heartbeat pitter-patters into something slow and easy and not so loud. 

When she sucks in a lungful of air and closes her eyes, Ben’s face appears. The lips and the eyes and the smile and all the little tiny lines that make up his face. She loves his face. She loves him. He is the only person she has ever truly loved, and she is so sad, so goddamned fucking sad, to leave him. She is sorry to leave him like this. 

And then she tips her head back, and everything goes

w h i t e.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **this was nearing 10k so I had to split it eep surprise**


	4. maybe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **"Because I'm tired of the fear that I can't control this //**   
>  **I'm tired of feeling like every next step's hopeless //**   
>  **I'm tired of being scared what I build might break apart //**   
>  **I don't want to know the end, all I want is a place to start."**   
>  **—Mike Shinoda,[Place To Start](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tEQoF_8Z7s)**
> 
> [Shinoda wrote this song and album as an ode to his best friend and bandmate, Chester Bennington, lead singer of Linkin Park, who committed suicide in 2017.]

Roaring.

There is a roaring in her ears, tornado winds, but that doesn’t matter very much because she’s floating. High above the clouds and the very Earth itself, cocooned in deep space where there is no such thing as sound. She floats among debris and asteroids and comets and stars, and there are even planets that try to sway her with their gravity, but she is untouchable. 

She is untouchable.

She is—

Something in her chest pinches tight. 

_Ow,_ she thinks, surprised. _That hurts._

The blackness around her deepens again, and she’s submerged in a cool, quiet place. Like an ocean, perhaps. She floats, untethered, her mind finally at peace. It’s nice here. Tranquil. Maybe she could stay here forever. 

Then there’s pressure. It starts in her chest and expands outward. Another point localizes in her head, and when it swiftly balloons, she feels the first stirrings of fear. Her brain’s going to explode. She can’t withstand such pressure. Her ribs are being crushed one by one by one, and as she watches, the stars around her wink out. 

_No,_ she thinks, grasping desperately for purchase. _No, no, what’s happening? Come back!_

**Don’t.**

This is a new voice. One not her own, which should be impossible. This is _her_ space—no one else should be here. She flinches and spins, searching for the source. 

**Don’t,** it repeats, relentless. **Don’t, don’t, please don’t—**

“What— Who are you?” she calls, and her voice echoes again and again, for miles, for eons, back through time. It doesn’t sound like her. It doesn’t sound like anyone. 

**—don’t, oh _god,_ don’t fucking do this—**

“Don’t _what_? I’m not—”

**—leave, you can’t go, I need you, _no no no,_ don’t leave me, don’t leave me, don’t leave me—**

“ _Where are you?_ ” she screams, frightened now. Why is there another voice here? There shouldn’t be anyone else. She’s all alone—that’s how it’s supposed to be now, here at the end. So _who’s there_? 

**—I need you, I need you, _please_ don’t go, _please_ don’t leave me, I love you, I love you so—**

Rising to a wail now. And Rey chokes back a silent sob because she doesn’t understand what’s happening, she doesn’t understand who that is or where they are—where _she_ is—or how she got here or where _here_ even is, and at first this place was quiet and warm and peaceful, exactly what she expected, exactly what she hoped for, but now she’s scared again, and the warmth has fled, and she doesn’t like it, she doesn’t like it one _bit_ —

**—please come back to me, please, I’m begging you—oh god, please, _PLEASE_ —**

“Stop it,” she gasps, clutching her head. There is no head and there are no hands, and she doesn’t have a mouth with which to gasp, but she does all of these things anyway, and the voice wails on and on in a meaningless stream of agonized exclamations. 

**—need you,** it wails, heartbroken, **and I love you, I love you so much, and I can’t do this without you, I can’t—I’ll do anything—**

Something sharp pricks her chest, and she instinctively flings herself away, but of course there’s no one there. Just emptiness. She casts about wildly, enclosed on all sides by black space, but then the pain in her chest sharpens again, and it tugs, and it _tugs_ , and she stumbles forward, it _drags_ her forward, and she fights but it’s no use because whatever this is, whoever’s in control now, is stronger than her, far stronger, and she screams because the pain is too much, and she wants to go back to sleep now, she wants it to be quiet again, please, no more, _no more—_

Within the dark vastness of her endless space, something snaps--less like a lone gunshot and more like the detonation of a bomb—and her body jolts in response. Wind rushes past her ears. She’s falling, but—

No. That can’t be right. She’s in space, and in space there’s no up or down. And yet her stomach seizes like it does whenever gravity suddenly shifts, on a plane meeting turbulence or a boat crashing through waves, spinning her in circles, lifting her high into the air only to slam her—

Back to Earth.

Her ears pop, and sound replaces the whistling wind. There’s a frantic beating, almost a buzzing, close to her face, so fast and so loud she wonders if there’s a plane passing overhead. Or maybe she’s _on_ a plane. She’s never flown before, but she imagines it would sound something like this--loud and, somehow, like a drill in her very bones. 

Hands on her face and on her chest, her shoulders and arms. Voices, too many voices, all tangled together like telephone wires. But all around her—black. She’s sightless. Why can’t she _see_? Why can’t she—

“—come back to me, Jesus Christ, you know I can’t do this without you—"

The voice again. But now it’s loud, and clear, and vaguely familiar. She knows that voice. Doesn’t she? It’s—right on the tip of her tongue—

Pain flares everywhere as she’s jostled around, hands on her neck and wrists, hands on her face again, and people are talking, people are saying something too slow and too high for her ears, and maybe it doesn’t matter because any second now she will return to that black, empty void where there is no pain, no hurt, no pulse of unending agony that threatens to rip her mind in half, any second now, any second—

Something on her face. Something light and soft like a butterfly’s wings.

“Listen to me,” it whispers in a voice rough from screaming. “I know it’s hard, baby, but you need to come back. I need you here. _Please._ ” The voice splinters, and red sparks fly across her vision. Is that what pain looks like, here in the real world? What _is_ the real world? 

Where is she? 

“Please don’t go,” it sobs, and something wet touches her cheeks. “Please, baby, _please,_ I can’t fucking—there’s nothing _here_ for me, I’m—” The voice breaks off abruptly, and then there is more wetness, drip-drip-dripping on her face. Maybe they’re not on a plane; maybe they’re outside, and it’s raining. 

Distant voices. A loud bang. Hands on her cheeks, lips on her mouth, hot breath coasting across her face, melting the frost on her skin. Something big rumbles, and the very air around her vibrates. She struggles desperately to hide, to go somewhere the pain isn’t scorching her eyeballs, isn’t sliding like lava in her veins, but escape is impossible. She’s here now—the stars and planets are so very far away. 

Then the voice, chanting, “Stay with me, stay with me, stay with me—”

“—sir, you need to move aside—give us some space, please—”

“—out of the way, sir, we need to—”

“—bleeding?”

“—pulse, but it’s faint—”

“—blood pressure dropping—”

Her mind goes fuzzy again. Warmth steals over her, banishing the pain, and she sighs with relief. That strange tugging in her chest abates, but she still feels it there, almost like a second heartbeat. It’s like there’s a thin string, splashed pain-red, tied securely to one of her ribs, and on the opposite end is...something. Something keeping her tethered. 

_Wish I had some scissors,_ she thinks irritably. _Snip it clean through._

Beneath the cacophony of voices and random banging and a hundred other things, like a low hum, is his voice. “I love you. I’ve loved you since the day I met you, Rey. Please stay with me. I love you. I love you. Please don’t go.” 

_Rey,_ she remembers suddenly, and it's a light, a beacon. _That’s me. Rey. I’m Rey._

And then, because there's nothing left to do, she submits to the dark.

⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️

The red string tied to her lower rib tugs, and tugs, and tugs again, insistent, stubborn, and Rey finally opens her eyes to an unfamiliar gray ceiling. Some of the tiles are spotted in with what looks, ridiculously, like tiny shapes in black Sharpie. Which is strange. Why would someone draw on the _ceiling_? How does one even reach up there?

She thinks they might be hearts. 

Little by little, Rey becomes aware of a steady beeping. It’s soft but disruptive. Doesn’t sound like her alarm, and Ben’s never needed one—somehow his body knows exactly when to rise in the morning. Maybe one of the neighbors—

But then she inhales, and two things hit her at once: the tight feeling in her chest, and the recognizable smell of disinfectant. Lemon and rubbing alcohol and bleach, and something else, something faintly musty. She’s watched enough TV to understand what that means. Combined with the relentless beeping, there’s only one place she could be, and it’s certainly not at home in her own bed. 

She’s in the hospital. 

It all comes rushing back to her then. The Plan, and the bathtub, and Ben leaving, and the dizzying, out-of-control feeling of slipping away to a place unreachable. She vaguely remembers setting the knife blade to her skin, but the rest is blurry. What happened after she swallowed the pills? What happened after she opened her veins? Did the neighbors find her? 

One thing’s clear: she's failed. 

_You’re in the hospital,_ she tells herself slowly. _You’re in the hospital, which means you managed to do_ something, _but not enough. You’re still here. Still alive._

And then, _It didn’t work._

She swallows, a painful movement that sears her throat, and just as her eyes begin to flutter open, an unfamiliar voice cuts through the silence. She freezes in place, hardly daring to breathe. 

“How are we doing?” Papers rustle. Shoes squeak on linoleum. Apparently not expecting an answer, the voice continues. “The morphine should be wearing off soon. Keep an eye out for any new movement.” 

More silence. 

“Vital signs are good,” the stranger murmurs, pacing by the side of the bed. “We’ll need to switch the bandages in the next few hours. But overall, it looks like Miss. Niima is—”

“Solo.” The voice is hoarse, barely understandable. Rey is suddenly, terrifyingly, afraid.

A pause. “...I’m sorry?”

“Mrs. Solo. We’re getting married.”

The stranger—the doctor—softens his voice. “I see. Well, Mrs. Solo is recovering as expected. I’ll have a nurse stop by with new bandages.” Another pause. “Do you have any questions for me, Mr. Solo?”

“When can I bring her home?” 

“That’s something we’ll have to discuss at length. Though I would suggest, at the very least, another overnight stay.” 

The voices drone on, but Rey’s attention wanders. _Another_ overnight stay? The last time she was awake, it was early evening. How long has she been asleep? Have _days_ passed? 

She forces herself not to think about Ben. Or the ragged, broken sound of his voice. Or the way he asked his questions with an edge of desperation, an edge of bewilderment, like he doesn't understand how they got here. She doesn’t want to listen to that and be reminded that she's responsible for it. 

It’s not fair because...she shouldn’t _be_ here. Even worse than the knowledge that she’s failed, worse even than the lingering pain in her chest, is the subtle sense of relief blooming in the very back of her mind. She’s not supposed to be here anymore, but she _is_ , and a part of her is so glad it didn’t work. 

Rey wants to stay, just as badly as she wants to go. How is she supposed to handle that? It's not only unfair, it's confusing. She doesn’t know how to feel or what to do now. The Plan never allowed for more time, for an "after." There was an end date, and that was it. That was the finish line, the stopping point, the definitive cut-off. 

And yet, she’s still here. 

So now what? _Now what?_

Sometime later, stirred to wakefulness by the buzzing florescents overhead, Rey rises from the depths to break through the surface again. It’s incredible how easily she fades away from reality. It’s not until she inhales the disgusting odor of bleach mixed with lemon disinfectant spray she realizes that, at some point, she fell asleep. Before, it would take her an hour of concentrated breathing to fall asleep in their bed at home, so this sudden dipping in and out of consciousness is...strange. 

The hospital is quiet, save for the monotonous beeping of a nearby machine—a heart monitor, it must be, what else would be so constant, so steady?—and so, with little understanding for what must happen next, Rey opens her gummy eyes to a room awash in muted November sunlight. 

The door is closed, the small TV hooked up in the corner, near the ceiling, is turned off. Her reflection in the blank screen is wavery, indistinct, though that might just be her vision. She drops her gaze to her legs and notices that they’re wrapped in layers of blankets—not just standard hospital ones, gray and blue and white, but the plaid wool throw from home. 

_How did that get here?_ she wonders brieftly. Still, despite the layers, she can see the gaunt thinness ofher legs—thighs and calves and knees. Looking at them now, at their obviously diminished shape, she finds it absurd—how is it possible that no one, not even Ben, noticed? Why hasn’t anyone _said_ anything, pointed it out, even with that lilting, sing-song voice gossips use to signal false concern?

Rey's always been good at hiding, but this is something else. This is deception on another level. 

Her eyes move, inevitably, to her wrists. They lay in her lap, straight out in front of her. She feels the color fade from her face. Everything else in the room, on her periphery, fades: machines and equipment and the door and windows and even the rest of the bed. Her focus narrows to a point. 

Her forearms are wrapped in so many layers of bandages that it’s like she’s wearing thick wrist guards, or even a heavy cast. They’re both heavily padded, and yet faint red splotches dot the outermost layer of gauze. The sight sends a shockwave through Rey. Somehow, the blood has seeped straight through it all. For the first time, she wonders if she managed to nick a vein. 

_Impossible,_ she thinks uneasily. _I would’ve felt it. Cutting skin is one thing. Cutting a_ vein _is—_

Well. Perhaps severing a vein is no different than a normal cut. She’s still here, isn’t she? 

She becomes aware of the pain, then. It rolls in waves up her arms, dull and persistent and annoying. It’s strange for them to be the center of such a maelstrom. Usually it’s her chest that captures the hurt, squeezes and wrings her out, but now the pain is...well, not distant, of course, it's still very much present, but it's less internal, more external. Pain she can _see,_ pain she can do something about. 

Pain that is, at this very moment, escalating.

Wait. _I'm in a hospital. Call the damn nurse._ Her fingers fight clumsily for the call button. Even moving her arm a few inches is pure agony, but that’s exactly why she needs to do this, to bring a nurse into the room—so she'll have something to dull the pain, to make this all go away, to let her fade into a deep, dark place where—

A hand clamps gently but firmly over her own. 

Rey startles, jolting her arms, and nearly shrieks at the sudden pain. She had no idea there’s someone else in the room with her. It’s been so _quiet._ Why haven’t they—?

But then her eyes catch on the tall figure sitting stiffly in a too-small chair, broad shoulders hunched, wearing a black sweater with a small hole on the right breast, clear as day, and she goes absolutely still. 

Ben. 

And just like that, she has trouble breathing. Ben is in the room. Ben is _here_. The heart monitor beeps a warning. Her thoughts quickly spiral, and she keeps her eyes lowered. _I don’t want to see his face. I don’t want to—speak to him. Why is he here? Why is he here? Why—?_

They are both silent, but Rey knows that he's looking right at her, and she senses that he's realized she's finally awake. Neither of them speak. 

Before the tenuous moment breaks, a nurse comes barreling into the room. She wears a toothy grin and matching turquise scrubs with a cute fish pattern. With a hasty greeting, she comes right up to the bed, blocking Ben, and touches Rey’s face without warning, making her flinch, adjusts the oxygen tube stuck up her nose—and _when did that get there?_ —reads the pulse in her neck, and finally, carefully, cradles her wrists with delicate hands that smell like warm vanilla. 

“Oh, these are _much_ overdue for a change,” she confirms, peeking under the first few layers of white gauze. “Won’t do. Just won’t do.”

Rey stares straight ahead as she’s examined by the nurse—Holdo—and then a second one, who’s evidently in charge of her bandages because he immediately gets to work unwrapping them. He doesn't speak, either, which suits her just fine. 

The doctor comes in— _her_ doctor, she realizes suddenly, the one from before—and he speaks in a low voice Ben, who's slumped now in the room's single chair. She's close enough to hear what they're saying, but she makes a concentrated effort not to. She doesn’t try to eavesdrop, she doesn’t try to understand—all their words wash over and through her in a soundless, featureless wave of static noise. 

_You failed._ The words ring in her ears, taunting, relentless. _You failed, you failed, you failed._

 _You’re still here._

Her doctor approaches the bed. "Wexley," that's what his badge says. An odd surname, like something out of a science fiction novel. There’s an certain air about him that informs her this kind of thing is a normal part of his day—he’s handled similar situations. (She doesn't want to say it, the S word.) Her heart rattles in her chest at the thought: he sees this all the time. _You are nothing special._

Dr. Wexley introduces himself, and for some minutes he speaks of things like _recovery time_ and _careful monitoring_ and _available resources._ He says _suicide watch_. He says _pain management_. He says _lucky to be alive._

Lucky. To be alive.

No. _No._ Rey swiftly closes her eyes and imagines flinging all the wires, tubes, and tape off, imagines lunging at the doctor, pushing and shoving and kicking him away, imagines screaming until her voice gives out, until her legs fold, until she finds her way back to her void. The emptiness, the weightless sense of floating high above the rest of the world so she becomes untouchable. She wishes fervently to find that space, sink into it again, and pretend that none of this is happening, that the worst is over.

But when she opens her eyes, the doctor is gone, she is still in the hospital, and Ben is sitting silently by the bed. 

Her lips tremble. She wants to beg his forgiveness. She wants to crawl into his lap and pull his arms around her waist, nestle into him, ask him to keep her safe, to keep her warm, to keep her _here._

_Don't let me go. Don't ever let me go._ She wants to shove him up against the wall and beat his chest with her fists until all her fingers break, until her tears run out, until the pain is so monumental she can't tell what hurts and what doesn't. Until pain is all she knows. 

Instead, she simply stares straight ahead and does not speak. 

This, it turns out, is a good strategy. For Ben has plenty to say.

“I didn’t go to Leia's.” His voice is hoarse, scratchy. It sounds painful, and she ignores the vicious wrench in her chest that tells her _this_ is her fault too. “I got off at the Brooksville exit and turned back.”

 _Brooksville._ The name’s familiar, but Rey’s mind works sluggishly. It's a...town, right? About thirty minutes from their house. It sits almost equidistant between their home and where Leia lives. The town's famous for their cozy chai tea cafes.

 _Why?_ she thinks, not looking at him. _Why didn't you go to Leia's? Why did you turn around?_ Brooksville, she's pretty sure, is actually a few miles closer to his mother's house than it is to their own. Maybe she's remembering that wrong. 

“I tried calling your phone, but it—it went straight to voicemail.” The room hums with tension. Rey’s neck itches, but she keeps her hands in her lap, fingers pale and still and lifeless. They could be corpse fingers. 

Ben sucks in a shaky breath. 

She watches the door. Maybe the doctor will come back and speak more nonsense. Maybe the nurse will ask her if she would like anything from the cafeteria. Maybe she can call someone on the staff to switch off the light so she can close her eyes and pretend The Plan worked. 

She realizes, with significant weariness, that all she seems to do now is pretend. It takes more effort to maintain these false beliefs that it does to acknowledge the truth. 

Rey blinks back sudden tears. The Plan. It’s so odd, isn’t it? That she feels despair, _sorrow,_ almost as if she’s lost a dear friend. She’s read about failed attempts and how relief is often the foremost emotion survivors experience after realizing they're still in the world. 

Well, Rey isn’t relieved. She’s not grateful. Why would she be? This is the opposite of what she intended, of what she wanted. She should not be here, and yet it seems there’s no escaping _here,_ is there? 

Ben shifts, and she goes stiff. _Don’t look at him,_ she tells herself, terrified. _Do not look at him._

“I called,” he continues, almost whispering now. “I called, and then I called again. Voicemail.” 

At these words, she remembers, dimly, a vast, overwhelming sense of disappointment. Something to do with her phone, but she can’t remember what. Her memories are murky. She submerged herself in the bathwater, swallowed half a dozen pills—maybe more, she’s not sure—and then… Nothing. It’s just a blank canvas. An gaping hole in her mind. 

“I knew something was wrong. I could see it on your face—I could hear it in your voice—but I left anyway.” A heavy pause, and then a whisper: “ _Why_ did I leave? I suspected—I _knew_ —” 

Ben chokes, and his words taper off. Rey focuses on the pain in her arms, pulsing like a second heartbeat. Her skin itches beneath the bandages. The radiator hums and rattles behind the bed, sending a low vibration through her body. It’s kind of nice. Distracting, anyway. 

Her pain is bad enough. But handling Ben's pain too, on top of her own, especially when _she's_ the one who's causing it... That's too much. 

_What was it?_ she wonders suddenly, her eyes straying back to the door. _The pills? I lost count. Did I not take enough? Or did the cuts need to be deeper? One or the other, which was it? Both?_ How could she have failed so monumentally in this task she’s been handling with such meticulous care for over a year? _How?_

“Rey.” 

_No,_ she thinks immediately. _Don’t._

An echo. **Don't.**

He tries again. “Rey.” 

_Don’t make me look at you. Don’t make me speak,_ she begs silently. _Please just go, just go, just go—_

His voice strengthens, grows loud, frightened. “ _Rey._ Look at me.” 

She won’t. All she does is hurt him more. 

“ _Look_ at me, goddamnit!” 

Her fingers twitch, and she flinches reflexively—from the pain, from his raised voice, from the knowledge that he sounds like _that_ because of _her_. But he deserves to be angry. He deserves to yell and scream. 

She's made such a fucking mess of everything. 

“Rey.” His voice cracks, and suddenly he’s looming by the side of the hospital bed, dropping heavily to the mattress, curving a gentle hand under her jaw, guiding her face towards him. She doesn’t want to look, she doesn’t want to _see,_ but— 

Her eyes meet Ben’s. 

He’s pale. Paler than she’s ever seen him, even in the dead of winter. Paler even than that time he broke his foot and couldn’t leave the house for six months. Pale enough that his eyes are like twin dark holes in his face, ringed with purple-gray bruises, the skin sagging. There are more worry lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes than there were a few days ago, and his lips are bloodless. His hair sticks up everywhere—tousled, matted, like he’s just rolled out of bed. 

A surprised gasp hiccups out of her when she notices the red glaze to his eyes. _What’s wrong with him? Is he sick?_

“Rey.” A whisper. Almost tortured, like she has him by the throat. “Baby. You _left_ me. You went somewhere—somewhere I couldn't follow." 

She shakes her head automatically. _Yes,_ she thinks uneasily, _but no. It—it was for the best, of course it was._

His face crumples, and the hand on her jaw shakes. “I didn't know—how to—what to _do,_ you were so far away, and I—I couldn't—" He swallows, continues, "Do you understand? Do you have any _idea_ —” But he’s breathing shallowly now, and his words are staccato, erratic. “Without you, it doesn’t matter—none of this matters—and when I thought you were—when I thought you were— _gone_ —I wished—” 

He pauses again, struggling. Rey sits frozen. 

And then, calmly, “I wished I was dead too.” 

Her heart cracks. “ _No_ —no, Ben—" 

Tears slide soundlessly down his cheeks. He doesn’t wipe them away. “You are _everything_ to me, Rey. You are my whole goddamn life,” he rasps, his eyes rimmed in red. “I love you so much, I can’t— Sometimes it _hurts_ , how much I love you, it’s a physical fucking pain, and for the rest of my life I’ll always have that image of you—in the—in the bathroom—” 

Ben drops his head into his hands and suddenly, miserably, begins to sob. 

She’s frozen with horror. _No._ No, no, no, _no._ Not once, not even in the deepest recesses of her mind, had she imagined this sort of reaction. And no wonder—it's devastating. Ben’s shoulders shake, and his sobs, although quiet, are the only sound in the room. Each one is like a vicious dart to her chest, peeling away layer after layer, puncturing organs and ripping through tissue. 

_I’ve done this,_ she thinks, stricken. _Me._

And she starts to cry too. Her already fragile self-control crumbles, and with Ben's sobs ringing in her ears, the hurt in her chest quickly begins to outweigh the hurt in her split wrists. She runs a hand across her face, smearing the tears, and cries openly—not quiet, not pretty. 

Because it’s _not_ fair, is it? It’s really not fucking fair that she’s still here, that it didn’t work. It’s not fair of her to put him through this, to make him suffer so needlessly. Why can’t she just be dead? Why can’t she just _not be here_ anymore? _Why?_

"I'm sorry," she whispers raggedly, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry—" 

The bed frame creaks, and then Ben’s arms are around her, his hands splayed across her back, his breath hot against her neck, but she shakes her head and pushes against them. No embraces, no hugs, no comfort. She doesn't deserve it—any of it. 

“Not your fault,” she says, over and over. “It’s not your fault, Ben, it’s—” She’s not really aware of what it is she’s saying, but it doesn’t matter. All she wants is for him to feel better. If she could gather all his pain and stuff it down her throat, choke on it, as long as that makes it easier for him to breathe, she would, without a thought, a doubt, a hesitation. 

Ben quickly collects himself, digging his knuckles into his eyes to stem the tears, and presses a kiss to her temple. His hands cup her cheeks, and then they’re staring eye-to-eye again, forehead-to-forehead. 

“You don’t ever, _ever_ do that again,” he says in a hard, unflinching voice. There’s an intensity in his gaze she’s only ever seen when he talks about his days as a criminal--the things he saw on the streets, the things he had to do to other people. It’s frightening. “I’m so—so fucking sorry I didn’t see—I didn’t _notice_ —” 

_How could you?_ she thinks. _I hid it so well._

“—I don’t care _what_ it takes, we’ll—I’ll get you help, whatever help you need, whatever you want, just please, _please_ don’t—” He breaks off, overwhelmed, and pulls her into his chest again. Breathing in the scent of her hair, he murmurs, “I need you. I need you here. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for me.” 

Rey shuts her eyes, trying desperately to grasp at any emotion but what she’s feeling. Because she knows something’s wrong, and not just because she’s still alive. No, it’s— She should be frozen, right? Numb, and she is, she’s numb to the point of complete debilitation, but beneath that layer is something unexpected, something unwelcome: rage. She is so _angry_ —at him, at herself, at everyone in this goddamn hospital who’s responsible for bringing her back. Because how dare they. That wasn’t their decision to make.

How _dare_ they. 

“Ben—” she says, and then when he doesn’t loosen his grip, “Ben, _please!_ ” 

He releases her at once, eyes wild and confused and hurt. She inhales quickly, the room spinning. 

“I’m sorry—“ he says hoarsely, rising off the edge of the bed, “I’m sorry, that was—it was too much, too fast, I just— Should I call for a nurse?” 

She swallows and shakes her head. “No, please don’t. I—” And then the words spill from her mouth, blunt and too loud, too honest. “You weren’t supposed to bring me back.”

Ben goes very still.

But there’s no stopping her now. She needs to tell him, she needs him to hear this, because if she keeps it locked inside another second she will explode, and when the nurse comes to check in, she'll find the room littered with tiny little pieces of Rey. “You were supposed to let me go, Ben.”

A moment of silence so loud it's almost a scream. 

“ _Never_.” His eyes are black, and when he raises a hand, she sees it’s shaking. “You think I should’ve just stood by and _let_ —”

“ _Yes!_ ” she shouts, furious. Her hands ball into tight fists, and she winces at the pain. “Yes, that’s what you were _supposed to do._ I can’t be here—“ A sob catches in her throat. “I—can’t stand it anymore. It’s all too _much._ Everything h-hurts, and I just want to—I just want to—”

But she's already lose that sense of urgency, and the words fall flat, and Rey goes silent. Her body aches like she's just run a marathon. God, she’s tired. It's beyond exhaustion. Let her sleep for a thousand years and even then it still probably wouldn’t be enough.

Ben is motionless in the middle of the room. 

Exhausted, Rey slumps back against the pillows. She closes her eyes again because that’s the only way to really shut out what she’s feeling and thinking. Maybe he’ll understand now, though. Maybe when she blinks and peels her eyelids back, when she braves a look around the room, Ben will be gone. She wants him, and she needs him, and she loves him, but she’s not _good_ for him. Why doesn’t he see that? 

Shoes squeak in the hallway. She doesn’t want to deal with the hospital staff. All their questions, their demands, their invasive looks. They’ll want to know _why_ because they probably already know _how_ —the evidence is pretty obvious—and these last few pieces will form a picture. Once they have that picture, they can solve the problem. 

That's what she is now. A problem. 

Everyone wants to make promises, but no one wants to follow through. They tell her, _Get well._ They tell her, _See a therapist._ They tell her, _Don’t be sad._ They promise, _Things will get better._ Then they'll ply her with medicine. Counseling. _Express your feelings. Recognize triggers._ She’s read all the articles. _Follow these steps and you’ll be okay._

Rey stopped believing that a long time ago. There is no solution, save one. But she’s failed to hit that mark, too.

After several minutes, Ben quietly returns to the bed and sits. This time, he doesn’t draw her into a hug, he doesn’t kiss her forehead, he doesn’t touch her at all. She reluctantly opens her eyes to find him searching her face, eyes intense and serious. She can’t read his expression, and she doesn’t try. What does it matter. 

“Maybe you don’t want to be here,” he says slowly, in a voice that's unbearably soft, like he's afraid volume will somehow hurt her more. “Maybe it’s all too much. I think—” He fumbles for a second, his lips dipping into a frown. “You’re right. It might be easier to let go. The problem is, I can't let you. I can't—I can't let you, Rey.”

She stares unseeing at her bandaged wrists. 

“I love you. I don’t care if it’s annoying, I don’t care if I say it too often. I love you, Rey.” Tentatively, he brushes a finger over the back of her hand. He’s very warm. “I love you, and I need you here with me. So does Leia. And Rose and Finn and Poe.” When he smiles, it’s small but not forced. “If you think I’ll make this easy for you, I’m afraid you’re mistaken.”

Drained, Rey manages to whisper, “You deserve better, Ben.”

Incredibly, he laughs. “I deserve _better_? Do you know how many times a day I tell myself _you_ deserve better? I mean, Christ," he laughs again, ruefully now, "I’m a reformed addict with a criminal record a mile long. I sought you out when you were seventeen, Rey.” His humorless smile fades. “You think I don’t know how much better you could have it with some other man? I’m terrified of letting you down, of disappointing you.” 

This time, Ben scoops up her hand and gently, so very carefully, links their fingers. “I very rarely feel worthy of you, Rey. You’re so brilliant, and so incredibly determined, and you put your heart into everything you do. You are talented and funny and brave, and—” His eyes darken, just a little, and his voice lowers. “—you are _mine._ I might not be worthy of you most days, but damned if there’s another man out there who’s going to make sure you have everything you could possibly want or need.” 

Keeping her eyes on Ben, Rey touches the side of her face. She _is_ awake. For a second she couldn’t tell. 

“I just need you to work with me, baby.” Ben brings her hand to his mouth and kisses her palm. “Even if you don’t want to, even if it's the hardest thing in the world. Please. I promise—I promise things will get better. I’ll _make_ them better.” 

Ben kisses each one of her knuckles and the tips of her fingers. She swallows hard as he holds her arm like it’s a precious thing, mindful of her wrists. His eyes graze her face, and when she doesn’t move away, he folds her carefully into his chest. Nuzzling the top of her head, he rocks them back and forth for a very long time. The sunlight fades to an orange glow, and the streetlights lining the hospital's perimeter flicker on like stars in a cloudless sky. 

She’s confused now, and confusion muddies her thoughts. It might be the drugs, or the pain, or a combination of both—or it might be that what Ben’s saying resonates with her. Somehow. 

_Even if it's the hardest thing in the world._

Rey knows what he's asking her to do—he's asking her to _try._ Despite the pain. Despite the endless days and nights of sleeplessness and fear and sadness. Despite it all, he still wants her to stay. He wants her with him. 

“Will you try?” Ben whispers into her hair. “For us?” 

There’s only one answer. One truth. It’s not a promise, not by any means, but maybe...it’s a place to start. 

“I—I don’t know, Ben.” 

He nods, slow and thoughtful, and twines his fingers through hers until their palms are pressed so tightly together their knuckles whiten. Her engagement ring catches the light, throws silver shadows across the blank hospital walls. 

They don’t speak for a very long time, but when the nurse eventually enters the room to check on her bandages, Rey sits up straight. 

And she takes a deep breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **thank you for reading 🖤 happy 2021 to everyone!**
> 
> US: [Suicide Prevention Lifeline](https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/)  
> UK: [NHS assistance](https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/suicide/)  
> All other countries: [List of suicide crisis lines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines)
> 
> **OTHER WORKS**
> 
> Fluff
> 
> [Saving What We Love](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23328586) (complete)  
> [#dirtytextchallenge](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25771213) (oneshot)  
> [The Artist's Garden At Giverny (1900)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24307039) (oneshot)  
> [Steal My Heart (There Are No Returns)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23701381) (oneshot)  
> [Only By Night](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23673103) (oneshot)  
> [Love Only Matters When We Bleed For It](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23415190) (complete)
> 
> Darkfics
> 
> [if you can't live without me, why aren't you dead yet?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25361551) (WIP)  
> [drenched](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25117876) (complete)  
> [I've Got A Dark Alley & A Bad Idea (That Says You Should Shut Your Mouth)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25814914) (oneshot)  
> [never bet the devil your head](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24609829) (complete)  
> [Chasm](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24962308) (complete)  
> [In Our Darkest Hour](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24810736) (complete)  
> [Stifle](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24724003) (oneshot)  
> [Aggressive Expansion](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26568556) (complete)

**Author's Note:**

> ~~say hi! (or come yell at me)~~  
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/naboojakku)  
> [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/naboojakku/?hl=en)


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